Japan Day 1

BalloonsWe arrived in Japan at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning. I’m not much of a morning person so I was not a happy camper to be woken up by the crew who were preparing us for breakfast at 4am in the morning. I must admit though, that the fact that we were landing in Japan did wonders in snapping me out of my mood. After disembarking from the plane we had to line up to go through customs and retrieve our luggage.

This is my second visit to Japan and Narita airport, the first time that we arrived we caught the limousine bus to Tokyo. The ticket counters are quite easy to find, they are almost directly in front of where you come out for baggage and have english and Japanese signs. You can purchase a limousine bus ticket for 3000Yen or you can also get a deal where you can bundle the limouseine bus ride and also purchase a 1 day train ticket pass for use in Tokyo at a special price. The bus stop is a short walk outside the front of the airport and they do drop offs at Tokyo station as well as several other popular hotels around Tokyo. It’s a no fuss solution, the attendants pack your bags for you and you can sit, relax or snooze for a couple of hours until you hit Tokyo.Lunch

This time I had planned a little better and I had organised JR Rail passes for the first week of our trip. JR Passes can be purchased by foreigners before you reach Japan. We purchased a week pass for $350AUD and the pass covers all railways operated by the JR network in Japan in a 7 day period, you can also purchase them for 14 day and 21 day periods. It may seem a little pricey but if you doing any travelling on Shinkansens (bullet trains) you very quickly save money! I planned the itinerary so that we were going to do the bulk of our travelling in the first week to Kyoto and Osaka, so this meant that we could activate our JR passes at the airport. This also meant that it also covered our trip from Narita to Tokyo on the Narita Express Train. The JR ticket office is underground so we took the elavators down and I got in line to transfer all our paperwork in to passes. There was alot of paperwork for 6 people but the lady at the ticket office was very efficient! The train station is under the airport so you dont have to walk very far to get to the station. The trains come in regular intervals so we did not have to wait long before we boarded. the airportstationNEX trains are quite new and each car has space at either end for you to stow your luggage and luggage locks that you can use. The seating was quite spacious, much more so then if we had taken the bus and the scenery on the way was much prettier as well. As a bonus there was an attendant that walked the aisles serving drinks and snacks that you could purchase. The train ride was quicker then the bus and much roomie,r but as a trade off we did have to handle our own luggage and then navigate Tokyo station shortly after an international flight! Tokyo station is huge and can be very daunting if you have never experienced it before, it helps considerably if you know a little japanese to ask for directions, but they do also have information counters that you can come across that have english speaking attendants.
Once we were at Tokyo station we stowed our bags in some large lockers. They have all sorts of different sized lockers to fit all sizes of bags, the size that fits large travel luggage is 600Yen per a day for storage. We were stowing our luggage as we intended to do a short trip to Ikebukuro before catching the Shinkansen out to Kyoto. That weekend there was a Balloon convention on and there was Balloon artists from all over the world attending, teaching classes and performing. Matt who was travelling with us is a magician/balloon artist himself and was really excited to attend. Using our JR passes we jumped on the Yamanote Loop Line to Ikebukuro and found our way to sunshine city.

CCitemsWe dropped off Matt and Georgina and the rest of the group, Chris, Stuart Mimi and I did some quick shopping up Otome Road at K-Books, animate, Lashinbang and around the corner where I finally got to go into Closet child for the first time! i was told that I was allowed a quick look because we were coming back to Tokyo in a weeks time, so I was hustled out quite quickly by everyone else. Not before I managed to purchase a Innocent World Book bag, a AP Wonder Cookie ring, AP Ribbon necklace, AP ribbon pearl brooch, AP Wristcuffs, a h.naoto bag for one of my BFFs in the USA. While I was dashing about making these purchases my darling BF spotted a BTSSB dollfie outfit in a glass cabinet that I hadnt spotted!! It was one that I did not have and have never seen for sale before so needless to so i was VERY happy with my first in store purchase!

On our way back to the station weIkebukuro grabbed some lunch at Lotteria, which is very similar to KFC. We then hopped back on the Yamanote line to Tokyo and got on the Shinkansen to Kyoto! It took 3 hours to get from Tokyo to Kyoto and it was starting to get dark as we arrived into Kyoto. We didnt want to be wandering around in the dark on our first night with our luggage so we caught Taxis to the house that we were staying in. The name of the house was called Seiun-An was used as a Geisha Teahouse until it had been converted by its current owners into an apartment. I contacted the owners privately about staying there and they were amazing in setting up the place to accomadate the 6 of us!

By the time we got there is was about  6:30 pm so I had an hour and a half to get over to a shop in Osaka where they were holding a doll, SD Suiseiseki for me to pick up! We rushed over and only just found the shop suias they were closing at 8pm. Luckily I managed to convey that we had come all the way from Australia in broken Japanese and hand gestures…. well at least I think thats what i tried to convey, the shop attendant let me in and I found the english speaking employee that I had emailed and he very nicely allowed us to look around while they packed the doll up for me 🙂 Jungle also have a website and allow overseas shipping but it was much nicer to go pick her up in person!  By that stage we were all pretty tired so we caught the train back to Kyoto and met up with Matt and Georgina and headed for home!

 

Continue on to Japan Day 2

 

♥ Alyssium♥

Seuin-an

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