Arrival in Japan
We had free earphones, and beverage service with honey-roasted peanuts. Dinner was a choice of chicken & veggies or curried beef, with rice, a slice of herring, salad and dressing, a roll, fruit cocktail, water, and a mint.
Sidebar:
English and green tea were offered by flight attendants, instead of just coffee and tea.
The variety programming included a special on hot dogs, Frasier, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and a baseball documentary. The movies were Miss Congeniality, Head Over Heels, and The Amati Girls. The movie snack was two tea sandwiches, cheese and crackers, and an ice cream sandwich.
Breakfast at 4:00 pm was an omelet and sausage or fried rice and beef teriyaki, with a slice of cantaloupe, pound cake, and O.J.
Sidebar:
Kent & Tamiko could not agree on the contents of the tea sandwiches. One was either fish pate or liverwurst, and the other was either sliced beef or ham!
We arrived at Narita Airport at 5:15 pm through dense clouds and steady rain. We disembarked down covered stairs to buses which drove us to the terminal.
Yuriko and her niece Kimie met us after we passed through customs. Yuriko had arrived in Japan three days earlier. Her first words to us were in Japanese, but we understood she was asking if we needed to use the restroom!
Sidebar:
Our introduction to Japan was the airport restroom! Wow! They had large family-size cubicles, and it took us a while to figure how to close the automatic sliding door. Then we had our choice of western or Japanese-style toilets, a urinal, or a bidet. There was also a changing table, a toilet-seat cover dispenser, a soap dispenser, and a sink or two. But no towels! We were expected to carry our own all-purpose handcloth!
We exchanged more money, and turned in our vouchers for the JapanRail Passes.
Sidebar:
How long did the trip take? The flight from Minneapolis to Narita Airport took 12 hours. The return trip took 10 and 1/2 hours due to tail winds.
Door to door, the trip to Japan took 24 and 1/2 hours.
The time difference between Jacksonville, FL and Japan is 14 hours. Japan is 14 hours ahead.
The Ride Through Tokyo
Kimie, daughter of Yuriko’s sister Kyoko, had graciously offered to drive us to her mother’s house. For her, that meant leaving home at 2:00 pm, giving herself at least two hours to drive to Narita so that she would be there in case we arrived an hour early like Yuriko had three days earlier. We, however, arrived on time. We didn’t leave the airport until 6:30 pm, and the drive took two hours home! Kimie and Yuriko had spent 6 and 1/2 hours on the mission of meeting us at the airport!
The drive was tough because of pouring rain, and heavy traffic. Kimie drove us in her older-model Mercedes Benz, with the driver’s seat on the left side instead of on the right, which is the usual in Japan. We rode on the left-side of the road, and Kent in the right front seat got to handle all the transactions with tollbooth personnel.
We were not able to see much because of the rain and the dark. We know we passed Tokyo Disney, and later we saw a brightly lighted Ferris wheel. We saw signs of various hotels and businesses. We saw many trucks of all sizes, and many mini-mini-vans.
We kept fogging up the car windows!
Oh, yes! It's June 7th Now!
So how did we leave the U.S. at 4:00 pm in the afternoon on June 6th, and 12 hours later end up arriving the evening of June 7th? We had crossed the International Dateline. There is a 14-hour time difference between Japan and Jacksonville.
Upon our arrival at Aunt Kyoko’s home, we were immediately offered dinner (having had breakfast on the plane at 4:00 pm!). We just wanted something small, but were offered Japanese hospitality.
Our first Japanese dinner consisted of a bowl of udon noodles with cabbage and deep-fried tofu, vegetable salad of chopped daikon (see sidebar) and carrots in a sweet soy dressing, salted cucumbers, bright-blue pickled eggplant, steamed broccoli, Vienna sausages, dried fish in a sweet soy marinade, and tiny ice cream cones.
We were stuffed and ready for bed after baths.
Sidebar:
Daikon, the Japanese radish, looks like a fat giant white carrot. The cucumbers and eggplants were long and thin, no more than a 1/2” in diameter.
The Japanese Bath
The Japanese bath room is always separate from the toilet. There is a deep tub filled with hot water, and somehow it stays hot! (The tub itself is heated!) The same water may stay in the tub for a couple days.
Next to the tub, the floor is usually tiled with a drain in it. Often there is a wooden platform over the floor. You sit on a small stool on the wooden platform or floor, and wash yourself thoroughly. There is often a showerhead, but normally just a faucet and a bowl to hold water for washing and rinsing. You would also shampoo your hair while sitting on the stool. Once you are rinsed off and very clean, then
you sit in the tub of hot water!
Aaaah!
Before turning into a prune, you get out and dry yourself, put on your yukata (light cotton kimono), and you are done!
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| Japanese bath at the Nikko Ryokan/Inn |
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