Tokyo for Lunch

Who is the researcher for this trip that stuck us at the airport? Ahhhh...Lynn! I was a bit nervous about jumping right into lodging in Tokyo, a place neither of us have been to and where everything would have been an unknown and so took what I thought would be a more familiar introduction to Asia...An airport hotel, the Holiday Inn.

This decision results in our having to take the hotel bus back to the Airport, then catch the express train to Tokyo, an amazing $100 round trip. Another weak research moment...what to do when we get to Tokyo? We got off at Ginza station and walked around and around, each of us in hurting shoes. But it was neat. Neither of us are shoppers, so this may not have been the best section to explore, but we did have some interesting views, enjoyed a park, found that almost no one spoke English (at least where we were) there is no such thing as an internet cafe and we had a fantastic lunch.

In our rambling about town we came across a little alley way that we returned to for lunch. The restaurant had about 30 seats at 6 tables and you were sat with other folks. We watched one group of three come in and they were sat at 3 different tables. WOW!

This was a locals restaurant, mostly business men. I was the only woman there. The nice thing about menus here is that almost all of them have pictures so it doesn't matter if you can't read it...just point and cross your fingers that you didn't just order something too wacky! We both chose what would have been a Binto styled meal here, but it didn't come in a box. Miso soup, rice, pork & vegetables, potstickers, and a beer for less than $20 very reasonable!

We found a wine shop and picked up a good bottle and headed back to Narita. Our summary is that Tokyo was not too easy for those who don't know the language. At least Ginza was not trying very hard to appeal to the tourist industry with most street signs sans-English subtitles. We wish we had done more research on Tokyo to maximize our time here. A tour might have been the way to go.

We slept through dinner and are up at 2 am...This Narita stop was supposed to be our time clock correction period...we hope the next day brings us into better balance!

So on our first day we figured we had a $125 lunch. Sort of like pilots and the $100 hamburger.