A store full of Prince Merchandising at the Minneapolis Airport – I was sprinting by, trying not to miss my connecting flight after the delay..
I am struggling to type as I have now been up for close to 30 hours but I am trying to beat this jet lag. I do not want to get up at 4 in the morning, so I am hanging on as long as I can .
The second leg of my flight from Minneapolis to Haneda airport in Tokyo was uneventful. I watched some tv and movies, did a lot of work on a wedding ceremony that is coming up in June, chatted with my seat neighbours. The food on Delta was surprisingly good.
Going through customs was hilarious. I wish I had been able to take photos or video, but there were signs everywhere saying not to use your phone. I didn’t want to be THAT woman. There were several planes that were coming at the same time, each with probably at least 600 passengers. It was a zoo. First we were all bottlenecked outside the gates, and then we went through what felt like a rat maze in a lab. I had no wifi so I couldn’t count steps, but I feel like we got 10,000 just going back and forth, back and forth in line like they do at Disney. Luckily I was in no rush.
It was quite comical, we kept passing the same people and we were all laughing at how absurd the experience was. I only took a carry on, so besides being a little confusing, I managed to get through customs. The agent was pretty shocked that I didn’t have a checked bag.
I spent a decent amount of time gathering myself in the lobby of the airport, installing my sim card, and planing out my transit route to get to my Airbnb. I did make one train mistake, but it was pretty minor – took the local instead of the express – still got there, albeit a little slower.
I am staying in an apartment with two bedrooms, a bathroom, hot plate with two burners, sink and a tiny washing machine. All for $80CDN per night – not too shabby.
My focus tonight was to stay awake till at least 9pm, so I walked around my neighbourhood for a few hours including reading in a park. First I checked out where the language school is and I was delighted to discover is it, literally a 2 min walk away – at the end of my street.
I had onigiri from a 7-eleven to tide me over till dinner, and then wandered the streets in this particular shopping district ( Okachimachi station area, right next to Akihabara, also know as electric town)., and found a great sushi place. I sat at the sushi bar, and had fantastic sushi. Turns out a little farther down the bar were a young couple from Ottawa.
Ok, I am literally falling asleep while typing, but here are a few good photos – worth a least a thousand words each. Sorry for the photo dump, but I am too tired to do much with them now.
Here is the sushi place:
In the middle of this busy commercial area, there are also small houses with intricate container gardening going on.
cool sculpture in the local park which reminded me of Henry Moore
Same park in the middle of the concrete jungle:
Shopping Area Shots:
