The Tokyo Diaries - Part 1

I thought today I’d start my Tokyo travelogue. The result of forty-eight jetlagged hours stumbling around Japan’s capital, it’s your definitive guide to this great city.

Part 1

My flight from London arrived on the evening of January 12th. I stumbled onto steady land dazed and hardly daring to believe I’d survived the journey without going mad and stabbing my neighbour in the jugular with a plastic airline fork (I believe I’ve already documented my terrible journey in a previous entry) – hardly daring to believe the time had actually passed and I was only one benign, nine-hour flight away from home. I’d already decided on the plane that I didn’t want to go to Tokyo anymore as I hated everybody and everything and I just wanted to go home and blubber, but once I was walking along to passport controls, my sanity miraculously returned.
I’d been a bit worried about how I was going to get from the airport to my hotel. It would have made sense to book a hotel near transport links, but when I was researching hotels on the internet I got so wrapped up in price considerations, hotel quality, proximity to points of tourist interest, did the rooms have a hair dryer, etc etc, that my head was spinning and I ended up choosing one more or less at random. So I was pretty pleased to find out that I could catch the ‘airport limousine’ (Engrish for ‘airport shuttle bus’) to almost where my hotel was, and an airport worker wrote out in Japanese a note for me to give to a taxi driver for the final leg. I love Asian efficiency!

The next worry was the hotel. I was a leeetle bit nervous that it would turn out to be extraordinarily budgetty. I mean, hotels with ridiculously over-the-top (and nonsensical) names like ‘Asia Centre of Japan’ tend to turn out to be squalid hell-holes with stroppy Bulgarian prostitutes for maids. After my happy experience with the ANA Crowne Plaza on the outward journey, I was ready for some luxury!

I think I may have already alluded to the toilet; the ANA Crowne Plaza in Narita was really nice. It was such a lovely, plushy hotel room; so, so clean, with two beds, TV, slippers and a robe, a more fully stocked than I have ever experienced before bathroom, and had a toilet seat with heat settings and sound effects! Yay! All other toilets have been a letdown for me ever since. The hotel lobby was huge and marble, there was a designer bridal gown boutique on the premises, and they had a swimming pool and Jacuzzi stashed away somewhere, too.

I enjoyed swanning around as if I were someone important. I don’t know about you, readers, but I love being a lone female traveller. I like to imagine people think I must be on business. What a high-powered job I must have for my company to send me to Japan and stay in a nice hotel! And at my age, too - so young! After all, why else would a woman my age travel alone, without the burden of a husband and young kids? I’m a career woman, of course! Or maybe I’m a rich man’s trophy wife, travelling to Australia after a trip to Europe for a spot of shopping. (Ok, maybe not in my daggy jeans. Unless I'm just TOO RICH AND COOL TO CARE.)

So anyway, I was kind of hoping that Asia Centre of Japan Hotel would turn out to be the kind of place sophisticated, 20-something single women travellers would frequent. Unfortunately it was indeed budgetty, its cell-like rooms very depressing after the groovy Crowne Plaza. The staff were nice, though. No bitchy Bulgarian maids. I think it’s illegal in Japan to be rude.