A Crafty Librarian: Flight and first day in Tokyo

Our plane trip was LONG. We arrived at the Grand Rapids airport at 6 am! Yes, I actually managed to crawl out of bed at the ungodly hour of 4 am. Our friend Sarah was going to take us to the airport, but her bloodsugar level was only 54. So as she injested tons of sugar, her wonderful husband Derek drove us instead.

We passed through the detectors except for one delay. For those who have always wondered, metal detectors can detect cell phones forgotten in front pants pockets. Hey, it was an honest mistake! I was still half asleep!!

They fed us very well during the flight. Three full meals and

all the pop, juice, or water we could consume in 13 hours. We also had opportunity to see 4 movies, including, Marley & Me. Which had me bawling by the end...But in a good way. I would have been very worried about Emily and Candy, but now no worries. A friend told me the story of pets crossing the rainbow bridge to heaven when my sweeties died last month. There is a rainbow bridge here in Tokyo, so I feel like they are here with us...

Our friend, Junko, who is the reason we came to Japan (to attend her wedding on April 18), met us at the airport just outside the customs department... Yep, they did allow us to pass into this beautiful country.

She gave us a crash course on the Tokyo train system..man is it crazy, but pretty easy to understand after studying the maps during the hour ride from the airport to Ikebukuro, the Tokyo suburb our hotel is located in.

We checked into our hotel, then Junko took us to Tokyo station in central part of city to see her office building and for dinner at a restaurant with bowls of udon (buckwheat) noodles. The bowls were, honest to God, bigger than your head!

Frankie almost ended up face first in his bowl! Poor poppet

literally fell asleep at the table after his first bite of curry beef udon. By this time it was 7pm, which is 6 am Michigan time. We got about 3 hours sleep on the plane, so basically we'd been going for 26 hours and were exhausted...obviously in Frankie's case.

Junko wanted to take us to see the cherry blossoms (sakura) in Ueno park, but we decided to go on Friday night instead. So after making arrangements to meet the next evening, we made our weary way back to our hotel...the Sakura Hotel Ikebukuro.