No Regrets!

They kept us well-fed on the plane, first with chicken teriyaki and then a ham sandwich and finally a cheese omelet. After meal service, the windows in the cabin were dimmed to the extreme, rendering the sky nearly black and the sun as a bright, perfectly round disc. An otherworldly scene with a dark blue glow that my puny iPhone camera sensor couldn’t capture. So beautiful, I couldn’t stop staring at it.

Our plane more or less kept up with the speed of the earth’s rotation below, keeping the sun up in the sky the whole way. Despite this, the windows did a really good job of simulating nighttime inside the cabin. But even with the simulated night, I struggled to sleep. I caught a few winks here and there, but between the uprightness of the chair and the armrest-hogging of my Taiwanese friend, I could only hold a position for about 30 minutes before I had to shift, and since there was nowhere comfortable to shift, I would wake up.

So I tried to get some work done on the computer, but that was just as fruitless. Properly typing required my elbows to stick out a distance that I didn’t have. So after a few minutes, I put the laptop away.

Dave and I chit-chatted back and forth the whole way. He kept me apprised of his affairs in first class on his Delta flight. His first-class pod had a door that didn’t close properly. Sympathies extended by the flight attendant were limited. Meanwhile, a fellow first-class passenger had smeared shit all over the first-class lavatory, resulting in Dave getting human shit on his first-class sock and luxury Delta-issued slipper. Again, sympathies extended were limited. Dave managed to communicate all this to me on his first-class wifi which was anything but, struggling to handle even text messages and made streaming video games impossible.

Our flights took us across Alaska and grazed Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula as we turned southward to Japan. Tokyo was blanketed by a thick, fluffy cloud layer, robbing me of sweeping city views and preventing any view of Mt. Fuji. My first glimpse of Japan through the clouds was of crinkly, green hills as the plane turned for final approach into Haneda Airport. As we descended, things grew more urban and then dramatically industrial when crossing the port of Kawasaki. We touched down 35 minutes ahead of schedule.

I caught up with Dave in the insanely long and snakey but quickly moving immigration line. He was panicking that his AirTag was telling him that his bag was in Alaska. I reassured him that his bag was here in Tokyo, collected him and his bag in baggage claim, and got through the automated customs process in seconds.

Dave insisted on a taxi to our Bellustar Hotel in downtown Tokyo, so we plopped into one and sat in heavy traffic for 45 minutes. It was then that Dave was struck with the anxiety of our very high hotel room on the 44th floor and I was struck by the nausea of overeating on the flight and sitting in a stuffy, stop-and-go taxi cab. What a pair we were.

By the time we got to the hotel, we had collected ourselves and made our way inside. We were both feeling wrecked, but we were nonetheless impressed with the majesty and grandeur of the Bellustar lobby and friendly service. After an Argentinian luggage attendant grabbed our bags, our Peruvian-Japanese hostess led us to our luxurious room. The living room opens up to full-length windows giving us a panoramic view of Tokyo. Beautiful! The buildings of Tokyo are made of gray squares and rectangles, right angles everywhere. There are very few signs or corporate logos on the tops of buildings, which surely made the city easy to model for Godzilla movies. The tops of the buildings all blink, albeit asynchronously, with the same exact red lights, a statement of conformity. Dave tested himself by walking over to the windows close enough to lay both hands on them. Good job, Dave!

After dropping our bags, we headed out to the surrounding neighborhood and red light district, Kabukichō. First stop was 7-Eleven, where we hit the ATM for some cash and got some egg and chicken sandwiches. I had regained my appetite at this point and was ready to rip into my sandwich on the street, but Dave stopped me. He was right. Apparently, food is meant to be enjoyed calmly and respectfully in Japan, and walking down the street while eating is considered sloppy or inconsiderate, especially in crowded areas. So interesting.

We walked up and down the neon-drenched alleys of Kabukichō, where heavily made-up young girls and boys lined up on either side of the street and hawked their bars and entertainment establishments. We spotted the famous Godzilla head on top of the Toho building at the Gramercy Hotel but were disappointed to find that the 8th-floor observation deck offering a closer look of the head was closed. The soft mist and neon gave some of the alleys a retro-futuristic sheen somewhat reminiscent of Bladerunner.

Spent, we retired back to the hotel room, where we crushed our sandwiches and chatted a bit. Before winding down for the night, I enjoyed a heated toilet seat and my first bidet experience. Felt weird.

Tomorrow is a full day visiting the famous teamLab Planets and exploring Tokyo, followed by a fancy dinner at Sky Restaurant 634 and a Tokyo Pub Crawl. Looking forward to it, even if Dave has some anxiety about the height of the restaurant, which sits atop the highest tower in Japan.