LAX to Narita airport, July 4th - July 5th. Tokyo, Japan

Wednesday, July 4th, 2007. I am going to Japan again, and this will be my third time. I got to the LAX airport early, atleast 4 hours before my departure time at 1:20pm. After waiting awhile, the plane finally was ready depart at around 1:40pm. I love JAL's service, and the flight attendant girls are so gorgeous! I didn't care to much for the movie selection, but the food was delicious, the flight time wasn't too long, as i flew before on JAL to Narita. I recommend if you fly JAL, to try their green tea, whether cold or hot, also try their version of a fruit softdrink, minus all that carbonation. The drink is called "Sky Time", and you can get it even here locally in LA, at Mitsuwa Market. I love this drink and i will always get it while flying JAL if and when i can get it. The flight time to Narita was 10 hours and 40 minutes, approximately. There was little turbulance, and as usual, i didn't sleep hardly any, maybe i rested for a short while. I arrived at Narita airport, local time in Japan at 4:20pm. After going thru customs, and getting my baggage, i headed off to redeem my 7 day JR-rail pass. I highly recommend that anyone traveling to Japan to look into the JR-rail passes, which come in 7, 14, and 21 day rail passes. It can only be bought in your home country, and once in Japan, redeemed for an actual JR-rail pass. I went to the basement level, which has various kiosks, sitdown places to eat ramen, cafe, JR-voucher pass ticket area, and regular ticket area as well as JR trains to and from Tokyo which connects to Terminal 2. Also, there was an area to rent "keitai" cellular phones. I rented out a vodafone from Softbank. I then caught a limo bus to the Akasaka Prince hotel in Akasaka. The bus left terminal 2 at 6:20pm and arrived at the hotel at 7:50pm. There was some traffic once in the downtown Tokyo area, and there were other hotel stops along the way, until reaching Akasaka Prince hotel. After checking in, and settling in my hotel room, i walked around the outside area. They had various ramen restarants, other types of food places, convenience stores, karaoke places, pachinko places, and more bars. I felt the area catered more to the "local Salarymen, and Office ladies, and other locals" more than the gaijin, but still, there were other foreigners like myself. I got a map of the area, and got more information from the hotel. About a five to seven minute walk to the Mitsuke subway trainstation which connected to other trains. I used the Marunouchi subway train line a lot, as it connected me to other Tokyo cities such as Ginza, Shinjuku, Harajuku, and Akihabara. One thing that i had to learn and understand as i got more use to their trains was that, Subways and JR-trains are two different train companies, and are independant of one another, but usually are together in one station, for example, Shinjuku station, Tokyo station, each will have a "JR-train" section, and another area for Subway stations. Just knowing your destination, and train route(it's colored, example, Green - Yamanote JR-train). If you know your destination, and route(colored), then you can figure out the fare amount. Subway trains don't accept your JR-pass, only JR-trains. So each time i took a subway train, which was often during this trip, i used "yen" to get my train ticket.

I walked around until around 9pm to find a place to eat for dinner. I finally found a ramen place to eat. It must've been the cute girl who was passing out "fan's" that advertised their restaurant. It was a chinese-Japanese ramen shop/restaurant, as i ordered the spicy and delicous ramen. I think the people that worked there were chinese but spoke in fluent japanese, i could tell by their slight chinese accent. It's good as i brushed up on my japanese conversational skills, since the waitress as other people in japan, seem to know very little if any english conversational skills. The ramen dinner, including a Yebisu beer that i got, totaled 1280 yen, just over $11, not bad for dinner. It is good to be back in Japan, as i recognize a lot of things from my previous trips to Japan. I love the vending machines, food, even the confusing train stations, I hope i don't get lost too much in this massive metropolitis. But i have to say there are so many hot japanese girls here in Tokyo, they know how to dress and look well! Afterwards, i headed to the convenience market down the street and bought some softdrink, milk tea, pastry and ruce balls for tomorrow's breakfast. I went back to the hotel room to watch some tv for awhile, and went to sleep just after 10pm, Japan time, after being up for 24 straight hours.