Tokyo, Day 1 – Flight and Arrival

Hello everyone! I am back from my trip to Tokyo, Japan! I’ve had an awesome, wonderful, fantastic, great, lovely time and I can’t wait to tell you all about it! I’ll do the best I can reporting, but forgive me if I forget things: I have seen so many things it will be difficult to describe everything! I hope you will enjoy my reports, because I’m going to put a lot of work into them. Have fun~!

On Monday, October 10th I woke up, suddenly realizing this was the day. The day my dad and I would fly to Tokyo! I was surprised I woke up at 8:30 am, since the day before I had packed the majority of my things and I was superexcited.

My carry-on luggagae, including three books, a photocamera, iPod and a
language guide. My passport is sticking out of my handbag.
After packing the last things I cleaned my room (so I had something to do and to have a clean room when I had returned), said goodbye to my brother (he had to leave early for school) and finally, it was time to go to the airport! We dragged our bags and suitcases to the car and we took some pictures.

Meet my dad. ^^ You’re going to see a lot of pictures with him in it.
We got in the car, waved to our doggies and we drove to the airport. It was so cool to park in the garage meant for departures! We put our suitcases and bags on a cart and took the elevator, to get out in a hall of the airport. To get to the place where we had to check-in our luggage and show our passport (it’s hard to explain airport-related things in English XD), we had to walk quite a distance. Luckily, there were a lot of moving parts where you could stand on. I’ve always loved those moving parts, but I have no idea what to call them.

I think this picture came out nicely, although I smile a bit nervously. ^^!
We arrived at the hall where we had to check-in and leave our luggage. It was very crowded and filled with people who either went on a journey or waved their friends or family goodbye.

Walking in line for the luggage check-in. My dad is holding all of our flightpapers.
Checking-in our luggage all happened automatically: you had to put your suitcase into some kind off niche, where the computer weighed it. Then you had to print a label and put it around the handle of your suitcase. It may sound easy, but it was actually rather difficult. It took us a while to find out how it worked and we weren’t the only ones. After giving off all of our luggage, it was time to say goodbye to my mom. Initially, we thought we would be able to spend a little more time together on the airport, but it turned out that most of the shops and restaurants were behind the passport-checking, so there wasn’t much for us to do in the hall.
Saying goodbye was terrible. My mom and I both cried and we hugged and kissed at least a hundred times. Then, it was really time to say goodbye. We promised to see each other the next day on Skype and waved one last time. God, thinking of it makes tears come up in my eyes again.

My mom making a heart-sign, holding the umbrella I
wasn’t allowed to take with me (I really didn’t know).
We were able to wave at my mom behind the lines again, since the hall was quite open. Then we had to show our passports and walked through the gates.
Behind the gates we went to get something to eat and drink and we decided on hot chocolate, coffee (the largest cup I’ve ever seen!), some raisin-bread and a slice of chocolate cake. We looked around for a while and eventually decided to just slowly walk towards our gate.
After exchanging some money for yen, we bought some magazines and a second language guide and we went to our gate, E20.

The airport is so big! I feel like I’ve still only seen a small part of it!
When we arrived at our gate, we immediatly noticed we were almost the only two Western people. All the other people were Asian, probably on their way back to their own country Japan.

Our gate, E20. You can see the line of people that leads to the
passport control and the body scan.
We could see our airplane through the windows: a big blue Boeing 747. It had so many windows! It had been a long time since I had seen an airplane from up so close. I was immediately excited again!

Our plane! Our seats were right in front of the right wing.
We went to stand in line and we slowly approached the passport and luggage check. After showing my passport I had to take off my coat, take my laptop out of my suitcase and walk through a gate, after which I had to do a body scan. I felt a bit weird standing with my hands in the air, but it was also funny. Apparently they didn’t see anything suspicious, since they only checked my shoes (which was interesting too, since they only squeezed the upper part).

It was so funny to see only Asian people waiting for boarding!
I really wondered what Tokyo itself would be like.
After waiting for a couple of minutes, we could board the plane. We walked through a hall and quickly approached the entrance of the plane, where we were welcomed by stewardesses. We quickly found our seats (I had a window seat, yay!) and placed our luggage above our heads. Next to my dad a Japanese woman took place (who slept most of the flight).

Texting my mom for the last time, telling her we were sitting in the plane
and asking her if she had found the note I had left for her.
Then, the plane finally started to move and we drove to our airstrip. While we drove, we saw a lot of planes waiting to depart. Then, the plane started to accelerate and we went faster and faster! Suddenly, I felt the wheels leave the ground and we flew! It was amazing and scary at the same time. It felt a little like a rollercoaster, only slower.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of clouds, so I couldn’t see much.
Our journey had finally officially started! In front of me, I had a tv-screen (of course every seat had this) where I could watch movies, listen to music and see where we were at that moment. During the flight I played Tetris, watched Pirates of the Caribbean 4 and watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother (love that series!). At night, I watched the full moon reflect in the water. I tried to sleep, but that totally didn’t work out. We also got… airplane food!

I always heard the most horrible stories about airplane food, but honestly: I liked it!
We both had dinner and breakfast, since we had to fly for almost ten hours. You can see my dinner on the picture. For breakfast we had baked potatoes, bread, a piece of ginger cake I believe, fruit and something nice I can’t remember.
The flight was very long, I’ll admit that. I loved flying and looking at the clouds, but the fact that sleeping seemed impossible and sitting all the time wasn’t great. I enjoyed myself nonetheless. ^^
And then, finally, we were close to Tokyo!

The sea! We made a turn and then flew to Narita airport!
About 30 minutes before we officially landed, the plane already started to descend gradually, which was very unpleasant: I got a lot of painful pressure on my ears, while my dad didn’t feel anything (I guess it’s because my ears are different). I enjoyed the view nonetheless and then we suddenly started to descend rapidly, indicating we were going to land. The ground came closer and closer and I could see more of the airport. Then the wheels hit the ground!

First real view on Narita airport!
The plane arrived at the gate quickly and we were finally allowed to get out! My dad and I waited for a while though, since a lot of people already grabbed their things to get out. We finally took our own bags and walked out of the plane.
We had arrived in Japan!

Welcome to Japan!
I counted leaving and the flight as one day, since we flew through several timezones.