Better Living Through Science

22/231016

So laura and I began our adventure through East Asia. We packed enough socks and underwear to last us about 14 days, which will be plenty because we are traveling for like 65 days.

Pictured above: me doing final checks and packing, and Sicily "helping" at 0745 departure day.

Anyways we left O'Hare at like 1240 local Saturday, flew for 13 hours, and arrived at Tokyo Narita at 1600 local on Sunday.

Firstly let me tell you the future is now. This plane, instead of having the shutter blinds like every other of the hundreds of planes I've been on, had done kind of electronic/chemical opacifying film.

It was bananas, you could adjust it by varying opaquenesses, and it could be controlled centrally. That is cool, because then when it is night time (or should be nighttime cause you are flying faster than the day is pissing) there isn't some asshole sitting next to you letting the blazing-thin-atmosphere-filtered sun into the otherwise pleasantly dim cabin. The captain or head steward/was can make it dark for everyone. It was kind of bluish which is why these pictures look extra blue.

( For you to learn, nano tech is great
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_glass )

Those are some mountains in Alaska/whatever Canadian territory is right there ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_and_territories_of_Canada ). They were beautiful, I've flown over the Continental US Rockies and they were cool, these seemed so much larger and remote.

When we finally got to Narita, I immediately noted their dedication to safety, being a former safety officer the US Army, I certainly appreciated it.

Just look at these professionals, the chock block went in immediately, on both sides of the wheels, everyone had a hard hat on, and not just a Reflective Hi-vis belt, or a sash, a whole vest apparatus.

First order of business, get localv monies. Too easy, I've pulled cash out of every country once been to, lil Wisconsin educators credit union hasn't failed me yet. It did, the ATM wouldn't take that or our capital one cards, all of which called and cleared for overseas use. Laura has a card that worked, but forgot the exchange rate, she pulled out 1000 yen, a little less that 10USD.

That won't even pay for our train into the city. Luckily we find a 7-11ATM that my educators card worked in I pulled out larger sums of money and away we went.

Anyways, narita is well outside the city so we had to take a train in. We got our tickets for the express train, the ticket guy said "not the first train" Roger I got it, cool not the first train.

So we got on the first train. The train ticket guy informed, us 20 miles from the city and 10 miles from the airport, we were on the wrong train but said if we give him more money is all good. Basically he charged us the difference in the price from the express, to the super awesome train we were on.

It came out to 25ishUSD each, but it did get us there in like 30 min instead of 85.


The train dumped us off very near the hotel. Not as near as we had originally thought, but close ebough. I say that because there is a hotel from the same company with 2/3rds the same name as ours that we walked into, and they sent us on our way to the right one.

We get to our hotel, and due to some fuckup on hotel.com part the hotel is showing the reservation as cancelled.

We tried to call hotels.com, didn't work. The hotel fortunately still had space and could take us. But we would have to pay because they never got money from hotels.com despite our having paid hotels.com in full.

The hotel was going to charge us ¥27800 which is roughly $275 which is $40 less than what we paid hotels.com for the space. We paid it, and hotels.com refunded the fee, we were already primed with our credit card company ready to dispute the charges if hotels.com was gunna get ugly about it. It never came to that.


We got our room, played on our phones a little and hit the streets for ramen, because laura be lovin the ramen.

Webwent to and ichiran place around the corner. These places are great, they have ramen and that's it on the menu. You can make it more spicy or garlic or oily or extra time noodles or an egg or what have you, but you chose this on a card, then go inside and pay a vending machine, then hand the ticket to a person, as you sit in a single person booth, with blinders. Kinda like those study desks in college I heard about but never uses because I never went to the library, ever. I digress, they give youbyour food and drop a little shade so you see no one or nothing but the ramen in front of you. Then you eat.

Now we are home, laura is asleep. And im deliriously tired, and writing this on ny phone.

It's a little narrativey and less substantive that usual, but I'll do better soon I promise.

Also welcome back, read my old posts to date yourself till I can express some of ny initial impressions of Japan and Tokyo and the Wine park area.