Konnichiwa

First days and first words.
The first day doesn't really count since both lack of sleep and jet lag took a heavy toll. The flight to Tokyo was actually pretty good, but though we tried really hard, for some reason we weren't able to sleep at all (unlike the guy sitting next to us who slept like a baby for 12 hours, waking up only for the meals).


Once in Tokyo it wasn't too hard to find our way: transports here are really good and rather simple to use when you learn how it all works. I recommend to take a fast train in the wrong direction... it's a good crash course and a strong mix of emotions.

Thanks to the help of a local policeman (no English spoken) we even found the hotel quite easily. It is clean and nice, but the room is the smallest we've ever seen and probably will... after all you can't really reduce a space for two persons much more than this.

Double futon Japanese room: 1.5 x 3m...

We tried to fight the jet lag and went out for a walk through the Asakusa neighborhood but in the end we had to give in and slept almost eleven hours straight.

Geishas (probably fake) walking around Asakusa

With our sleep pattern (more or less) recovered and thanks to our newly acquired Japan-rail skills, today we ventured out of Tokyo to Kamakura to see the giant Buddha statue. We managed to change trains four times without asking for help once, how about that! The statue is huge, 2nd largest Buddha in Japan, too bad that half of the country decided to admire it with us.

The short hike we did through the surrounding countryside was much more quiet, with some nice shrines and even nicer people who kept smiling at us as we were the only foreigners on the trail. We visited several temples in the city and in one of them we even saw a traditional marriage, and many boys and girls dressed in little kimonos.

Shichi-Go-San, Japanese rite of passage for kids of three, five and seven years of age

Tomorrow we would like to finally explore more of Tokyo and in the evening we will meet our first CouchSurfing host and spend a couple of nights at his place. We are realy excited to learn more about the culture and the city from someone local, plus K hopes to finally learn how to use chopsticks properly, so far it has been quite a disaster that ended up with both of her pairs of pants stained...