East (or west? I thought we were flying west?) to Japan!

Tuesday - January 21, 2020 to Wednesday - January 22, 2020

The day had finally arrived!  I was going to Tokyo!  So yes, I've been to Tokyo three prior times, but I've never been to the Tokyo Disney Resort as an adult - and Tokyo Disneysea has been on my bucket list for almost 20 years.  I've also never visited Kyoto, and as it's one of the few places in Japan that was spared during WWII, it's one of the very few places that still had historical buildings left still standing.  I desperately wanted to visit Kyoto since I love history, and  I finally talked my family into a trip to Japan to do Tokyo Disney and Kyoto.  This actually happened (for me and my anal trip planning) really quickly, I had less than 5 months to plan a trip to the other side of the world for 4 people all coming from different locations on different flights.  My parents were going to be in Taipei, my brother works in China and I was coming from Los Angeles.  We had to coordinate 3 flights on 3 different airlines to land at one location all within an hour.  Whew!

I got a great deal on Singapore Airlines during a sale, and nabbed premium economy seats for a lot less than they usually go for.  It was still around $500 more than the economy ticket, but my dad convinced me to jump for it.  Though truthfully, it didn't take that much convincing 😄, I was pretty ready to throw money at it.  As my flight wasn't until 2:45 in the afternoon, I got to sleep in, leisurely drink my coffee and shower before QQ Shuttle picked me up by 11 am.  I got to the airport super early and whiled my time away by finding a secluded nook with a chair and table and read my kindle and watched TV shows I downloaded onto my tablet while sucking on an overpriced latte and eating severely overpriced cookies.  

The best part about premium economy?  All this space!

I'm short, did I need this much room?  No.  But was it nice?  yup! 

showing off all the room I didn't need. 

I paid extra to sit in the front row - but it was worth it.  This way I wouldn't be anxious the whole flight about needing to either climb over someone when I needed to use the restroom or having some strange person climb over me.  I figured that alone is worth the money.  And it was.

I also swapped seats as I was boarding - some guy wanted to sit next to his wife, and I was actually supposed to be on the other side of the plane, but I ended up winning because no one sat next to me the whole flight, so I just had my stuff there.  I have no idea why his wife couldn't move to this side of the plane, but I still won!  Yay!

The lowlight?  The bathroom sink was broken in my side of the plane.  Which meant I had to walk ALL the way to the back of the plane to be use the restroom and wash my hands.  I got very judgey of people who used the closer bathroom.  They kept a large bottle of water in there to wash your hands with...uh, no.  That's dirty and nasty.

I also didn't want to get sick, so I brought wet wipes with me and wiped everything I could touch down!  I wiped my seat, headrest, table, TV, armrest, even the wall and the remote.  Basically every surface was wiped down, and I didn't use their blanket since I brought my own wrap to use as a blanket.  I was determine to NOT get sick before Tokyo Disney!  Keep in mind this is around mid-January, before covid-19 really blew up, even in China.  (as I'm writing this while we're self-isolating two and a half months later, it's a little mind blowing)

When you book premium economy, you also get to book the cook, so you get to choose your meals ahead of time.  I'm glad I did that since there was a much wider variety of choices, and also, I always got my meals first.  People around me would be watching me eat, and I was okay with that 😂.  I'd almost be done by the time everyone else was being served, and the one thing that was out of sync was the beverage service because of how early I received my food.  But all the meals came with a little cup of water, so I was actually okay with a later beverage service.  

short ribs with potatoes and vegetables for dinner

The short ribs were okay - they were pretty tender and the flavor was fine.  But it's airplane food, so it's not gonna taste like Mastro's.  It was hot, the gravy was flavorful, and it was filling, pretty much all you can ask for.  Also the roll that came with it was nice and soft, and I just stuck the little pat of butter on top of the foil covering the hot entree to soften and it was perfect by the time I finished the salad.

After clean up they came around and we all got Haagen Dazs ice cream.  Yay!

I actually didn't watch any movies.  I didn't sleep well the night before and I ended up making a playlist of the last season of The Big Bang Theory and dozed and slept to that in the background.  They gave us the same noise cancelling headphones that was provided to Business Class, and they were very comfortable, so I actually slept pretty well with a full belly and the familiar sounds of a comforting sitcom I've watched a million times before.  

I probably got a good 4 to 5 hours of decent sleep before they turned on the lights.  Breakfast time!  Well, it was more like 5 pm or so in Japan, but I don't say no to food, especially since I ordered it online.  Hainan chicken rice 💓, one of my favorite dishes.  So simple, so elegant, but SO hard to do right.

For an airplane iteration, it was pretty freaking good!  The sauces were on point, they had de-boned the chicken, which I always appreciate, and overall, it was very tasty and I was very pleased.  

I whiled the next few hours away filling out my landing forms and reading my kindle, and soon we arrived.  Flights are much more pleasant when you have some room to stretch (and the space in front of me was so big, especially without a  neighbor, that I could actually do some stretches and work out the kinks during the flight so I wasn't crazy sore upon landing), decent sleep, and pretty tasty food.  

Getting off the plane, I see Japanese Mickey's first appearance:

Look at Japanese Mickey, slumming it selling SK II 😁.  I have to admit, I don't use SK II anymore, but I was tempted to buy this bottle.  

While I was lining up for customs and immigration, I see my parents coming!  They were only a few minutes behind me, and once I was through, I waited for them.  We went to our respective carousels to grab our bags and we pushed our cart out to wait for my brother.  We were in Terminal 1 and he was in Terminal 2, so we had to wait for his flight to arrive (it was an hour behind my parents' which was 10 minutes behind mine) then take the terminal bus over to meet with us because he didn't want to head to the airport hotel we were spending the night in alone.

We headed to a luggage delivery desk to forward our big suitcases onto Kyoto, which we were heading to the next day.  Japan isn't ADA compliant and there are many stations that don't have elevators or escalator access, and it would be too hard getting on and off trains with each of us lugging a big suitcase, so I made the executive decision that we were going to ship our luggage from place to place to make traveling easy.  It cost around $90 to ship 4 suitcases - but honestly, it was the best money we spent on the trip. When we watched other tourists struggling with their suitcases on and off the trains and trying to find a place to stow them, we looked at each other and gave each other the nod.  Because we felt smart and superior.  We so snobby.  

The one con?  We shipped our suitcases off Wednesday night, but we weren't getting them until Friday in Kyoto because Kyoto was so far - it was a 4 hours ride via the bullet train.  In all other cases we got our suitcases the next day.  Our plan - which we successfully executed - was to each carry a backpack that had enough clothes for a night or two along with our essential toiletries.  So while it could be a little inconvenient, overall it was a success and made our travels much more pleasant and way less stressful.   

While waiting for Raymond to arrive from Terminal 2 to meet up with us in Terminal 1, I went to go pick up our Suica cards that I purchased online from Klook so we'd be prepared to hop onto any buses or subways without having to line up to buy tickets using machines we were unfamiliar with.  It ended up being a teeny tiny kiosk on the second floor literally super out of the way and hidden, but I left with our Suica cards and even managed to withdraw some cash from 7-Eleven's numerous ATM's in the airport.  

We all arrived in Narita between 7:30 to 8:45 pm - and seeing as how we would not get to a hotel in Tokyo until around 11 pm, we opted to stay in nearby Narita instead.  Our quad room only cost us $100 for the night, they had a complimentary shuttle bus that ran on a schedule from the airport, and it would also bring us back the next day to catch the Narita Express train into Tokyo so we could take the shinkansen to Kyoto.  We stayed at Hotel Nikko Narita, which looked much more impressive online than it did in person.  The lobby and facade were promising...the room...eh.  It was a hundred bucks.  But it served its purpose and we were satisfied with our choice.  

It was a traditional little room where the beds were futons bed rolls on a tatami platform which I actually thought was kind of fun.  We were tired and hungry, and didn't take photos of the rest of the room, but there was a little dining table with seating for four and a really small bathroom - almost cruise ship sized.  It also kinda smelled like pee...which I tried to cover by spraying Poo-Pourri in the toilet.  The plumbing left something to be desired.  But overall it was clean, it was close, it was cheap, and the futons were comfortable.  The best part?  They had a Lawson inside!  Raymond and I went down and bought $35 worth of convenience store snacks.  Japan has THE BEST convenience stores!  They're clean and they have every type of food!  It's amazing!  I have a total crush on their convenience stores.  We ate fried chicken (Lawson stores make their own), sandwiches, pastas, soups, ice cream and cookies.  Happy happy joy joy!

After our convenience store dinner (I swear, I could eat every meal from a conbini) we showered and went to bed.  After all, we had an early morning the next day - we had to go back to Narita to get our rail passes, book seats on the Narita Express into Tokyo and also travel to Kyoto.