Adventurenet.net

May 26, 2026

🏯 Tokyo! Let’s go!

Let’s fly to Akihabara, Tokyo and see what Japan has to offer. I’ve been studying Japanese and the written language for several months. It’s time to see if this work will pay off! I do stop at Don Quixote. I promise.

Thursday April 16th, 2026

It’s very early in the morning and I am excited to go to Japan!

The excitement has worn off.

Also, the store behind me is not open.

Take the bus…

To the train…

Oops. We did not mean to take this selfie together.

To the train…

And then the airplane!

I am very glad I have pre-pass thing for US airports.

Worth the investment.

I also spent forty dollars on an extra perk to get on the plane early so that I wouldn’t have to struggle with finding storage for my backpack.

I always pick a seat at the rear of the plane, which is a great place to sit, but it also means that I board last, which is when there are less overhead storage slots available.

Today, I want to get onto the flight with as little friction as possible.

I thought I was paying for early seating both ways.

I was not.

I don’t think it’s worth the forty dollars to only get this perk for a single flight.

Now I know and you do too.

While I am seated, everyone else is squeezing past each other.

(The early seating has made me bougie).

It is nice to be seated.

Oh, we have a pillow and a blanket. I did not expect this.

The longest flight I’ve ever taken was about five hours long.

This one will have over thirteen hours of air time.

Let’s take a closer picture of this bundle of cotton for you to see.

This is my new flying friend Mohuza.

We’re both heading to Tokyo and swapping stories about good places to visit.

Also the middle seat is totally empty.

Hell yeah.

Long flight leg space.

It’s good to be comfy for the long flight.

The pilot on this plane made me chuckle.

He got on the intercom and said “Okay, so don’t be mad, but…”

And then he told us that someone forgot to take something off of the front of the plane which messed up our take-off time and he wasn’t sure when we’d be leaving. We sat for about an hour to wait for an opening.

After leaving New York city in the morning and flying for thirteen hours, we land in the morning in Tokyo.

Supreme jet lag!

Mohuza and I both struggled through the Japanese intake system.

I knew that I would have to fill out a form for my hotel and I printed off my information and also took screenshots so that I could fill out the form on the airplane, but we didn’t get one. We had to stand in line to get the form, then in another line to give the form to the folks at the airport.

Plus another line for customs.

Then another line to get out of the airport where Mohuza and I both tried to figure out how to get to our hotels which were both in the same directions, but our maps were giving us different routes.

Luckily I had a Suica card pre-loaded with yen on my iPhone, so it was an easy tap-to-pay to get onto the monorail out of the airport.

My first views of Japan up close.

The subways are easy to follow, and I make it to Akihabara, the part of Tokyo where I will be staying.

I made it!

I’m in Tokyo!

But first, we drop off the backpack at the hotel.

Speaking of the backpack, we should talk about this.

People pack too much when they travel.

To be fair, as a male I have less societal expectations than women, so that’s part of it, but men pack too much too.

I packed too much.

I should have gone with five or six days worth of clothes rather than eight.

And I shouldn’t have brought the tablet.

I could have had a lighter load, but I am here now!

This room is tiny, but it doesn’t feel small.

Also, I have my CPAP machine so that I don’t turn into a cranky jerk from choking myself awake all night.

Thanks to the camping trip I took last summer, I know where my limits are.

Also I’ve been losing weight in preparation for my trip to Japan, and this should also help with my sleep apnea.

But enough chat about breathing at night, let’s see what Akahabara has to offer for a jetlagged American!

Oh, there’s more hotel pictures. Let’s get through those first.

The legends of Japanese bathrooms are true.

They’re tidy, comfortable, have wonderful features, and most importantly: a bidet.

That’s something I hate about traveling.

Not having a bidet.

I am not a fan of cleaning up peanut butter from a carpet with paper towels.

A delightful start, but let’s go see Akihabara!

I hear Don Quixote is the place to be!

It’s about a fifteen minute walk from my hotel.

I mean. Yeah. Gizmos is good.

4,000 yen? That’s about twenty-five dollars US, right now.

Okay. We’re off to a good start.

There’s a maid cafe in this building, too.

There’s room in the arcade at this early hour.

I need to stay up as late as possible. The longer I can stay awake, the later I can wake up and be closer to a regular schedule.

Let’s grab some coffee.

Holy shit!

I ordered entirely in Japanese!

I did not expect “chisai” (small) and “ooki” (big) to be some of the useful words that I learned, but they paid off at the coffee shop.

And the rumors of Japan are true.

It’s so safe and crime-free that folks can wander off without their purses and have nothing to worry about.

Evidence.

I see that there’s less smoking in Japan than there used to be.

This coffee shop has a smoking room which is a tiny rom with strong ventilation to keep the smoke away from everyone else in the store.

Very cool, Japan.

Back to the hotel for a bit.

It’s good that I’m not driving here.

This hotel can’t bear the responsibility however caused in this parking lot.

I remember looking up my hotel in advance and being kind of sad that I was surrounded by jewelry stores rather than nice places to eat, but there’s plenty to eat around here.