(25 December 2008)
After 2-hours flight to Gold Coast and another 9 1/2 hours to Tokyo on Jetstar, we finally landed at Narita Airport. Left the house at about 4am and arrived at close to 8pm Tokyo time. Walking towards customs and baggage collection.
The arrival area was pretty ordinary, just like any other ordinary airports. Nothing out-of-this-world.
the train-shuttle to take us to the Main Terminal.
The officer who stamped my passport greeted me with a “Selamat petang” after seeing my Malaysian passport. After clearing customs and collecting our baggage, we queued to get the NEX (Narita Express) tickets.
Got our tickets and headed to the platform
another look back at the Terminal
waiting at the platform
Our train is the 20:39, which arrived on the dot, as 99.9% of the trains in Japan do.
On board the NEX
behind my seat
plenty of leg room
The ride to Shinjuku took approximately 1 1/2 hours, stopping at Tokyo station prior to Shinjuku. Getting off at Shinjuku…
Heading towards the West exit of Shinjuku station. Shinjuku station is huge. It is one of, if not the most, busiest train stations in the world. There are many different exits and one can easily get lost if they don’t put in effort to think about the directions. Just like the train system in Tokyo. It may seem overwhelming at first, but once you put in the effort to understand the system, it will turn out to be one of the most efficient train systems in the world. You hear that Melbourne?
In addition to these exits, there are South Exit, South East Exit, Southern Terrace Exit, New South Exit and probably more.
After checking-in at Nishi Shinjuku Hotel, we headed straight to the soba shop nearby, which we ate at 2 years ago. Soba de kudasai
Kee had this
and i had this
Tasty but the soba wasn’t hot enough. Returning the bowl and tray after the meal is the unspoken policy
and so begins our 3-week Tokyo journey…
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