After what actually felt like quite a short flight and almost exactly 24 hours (on the clock) from when we left home we landed in Tokyo, arriving at immigration we were a little worried as there was a massive queue but it actually moved quite quickly and we were out of the customs hall in under an hour. Happily the driver was there to meet us and we settled into the car for the drive to the hotel, I thought it was going to take a couple of hours but was only actually an hour which meant that although our room was ready we couldn’t check-in until 2pm so we collected the package that had been left for us and went to the hotel bar to work our how to connect to the mobile wifi and check we had the tickets we were expecting. The pocket wifi is really easy to connect and will at least mean that if we get lost we can use google maps to find our way round. After a couple of drinks we went back to reception and got our key, we had been warned that hotel rooms in Japan are quite small and that is definitely the case, I think the TV is almost the same size as the room but it is where we will call home for the next three nights so after a couple of hours rest we went out to explore the local area. This hotel is right in the middle of the Asakusa district and only a few minutes from our hotel is a complex of temples that contain the Senso-ji Temple which is a world heritage site. We walked round the complex watching the locals (and tourists) pray at the shrine and shake the sticks to see if they are going to have good or bad fortune. After that we walked round the pedestrian area, everything was starting to pack away but it was really nice just getting out for a walk. We looked in a number of restaurants, rather like China they have photos of the dishes so you can see what you are getting although you still have to guess what it might contain, in the end we settled on a quite small restaurant that did have some English on the menu and it turned out to be a great choice as we had dumplings and chicken to start then Miso Raman with pork, leak and spring onion – spicy for the main it was very nice, we need to be careful we don’t eat there for the next three nights! After that we went for a bit more of a walk round then back to the hotel for a coffee and prepare for our first full day tomorrow.
