We had a 3am wake up for leaving Ormond at 4am to get to the airport for our 6am flight to Newark. Ryan was amazing and coordinated with us to avoid paying for parking. The drive itself was terrible, with fresh snow down that was as of yet un-plowed and total whiteout conditions. Made it to the airport safely in the end and breezed through security and customs with plenty of time to make the flight. I was sitting next to an owner of the Senate Tavern Pub downtown who got invited by their beer rep go the super bowl. Flights, accommodations, all access tickets for the low, low price of $10,000. Which is actually low, considering that was the face value of the tickets were $10,000 by themselves. Apparently some bar in Toronto backed out so Senate Tavern guys for a discount.
Newark was entirely uneventful (we got some New York Bagels), as was our flight to Tokyo itself which is pretty much what you want from a flight. Jordan was not 100% listening the whole time and refused to attempt sleep which was very annoying and would set us up for a tough time zone transition. We all did sleep a bit, but certainly not enough.
Customs on arrival was the weirdest setup ever. There was this massive queue that was a mob to get into. But once you were in, the line was in constant fast movement. So everyone is walking this massive maze of ropes. Until you got sorted into a customs booth, then it was a wait behind three others and it took a while from there, about 5 minutes per person ahead.
Easy 45 minute subway ride to our hotel in Asakusa. Room was pretty good, with a slightly separated area for Jordan’s bed but not otherwise a lot of room to maneuver. Bed on the floor was unfortunate to begin with, but the quality of mattress was not great. Emily’s injured back especially didn’t like having to get down to the floor. We did get a kimono for each of us to use while we were there, which Jordan particularly liked.
After a quick shower and change, we headed out and walked to Skytree for dinner and exploration. Ate at a cutlet place which was pretty cool. Had to grind your own sesame seeds and mix the dipping sauce while waiting for your food (which was two kinds of fried pork and the most gigantic fried shrimp I have ever seen). After about 4 bites, Jordan fell asleep in the booth and stayed that way through the rest of dinner. We then had to carry dead weight Jordan through the mall to the subway. This did result in a hilarious Weekend at Bernie’s moment where we got pictures of passed out Jordan in front of the Pokemon Center.
Of course, after getting to the train station, Jordan woke up and wanted to go back to the Pokemon Center. So back we went through the maze of a mall to go there. Finally, it was back to the hotel for sleep. We all fell asleep at 7:30 or so. Would have hoped to go later to avoid the worst of the jetlag, but we were all quite exhausted.
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