Tokyo day 1&2 – Utrecht – Brussels – Rome – Tokyo

Utrecht – Brussels – Rome – Tokyo seems quite a trip, and I must say, it's quite exhausting. We started out by getting a cab at 5:30 in order to get the train at 6:02. We cannot really rely on the Dutch railways, but although every train was delayed, we arrived in Antwerp at 8:00, so we got out and had some breakfast there before taking the train to Brussel Airport where we had to catch a 12:00 flight to Rome. The first flight wasn't the best I ever had, but there was free beer on board and it arrived on time, so not a big deal. We rushed through Rome's Fiumicino airport to make the transfer to find out the flight to Tokyo had a little delay (it turned out to be an hour when we landed). So, hungry as we were, we bought a sandwich, which unfortunately turned out to be as old as the Colliseum itself.

Upon checking in for the flight to Tokyo we couldn't find any infomation on Seatguru about the layout of the seats for the flight to Narita, so we had to guess, and luckily seats 18KL seemed one of the best in Economy class. Located on the first row in economy, so disembarking early and plenty of legspace, i could easily stretch my legs! Despited that, i didn't get more than 4 hours sleep on board, so quite tired we arrived in Japan, where we went through passport check, costums, got money, bought a trainticket to the city, some drinks and arrived at the hotel about 25 hours later then we left home.

Our small hotelroom was just 11 square meter, not quite the rooms we had in Dubai, but that's something to expect in the biggest and one of the most expensive cities in the world. After playing a game of tetris with our luggage we grabbed our first Japanese meal. (How do these guys eat rice with chopsticks so damn fast?) After the meal we walked a bit through a residential area, took a break to chill on the banks of the Sumida river and ended up at the Edo-Tokyo museum. The museum was located next to the big sumo-stadium, so in the area we could see some typical Japanese sumowrestlers that had just finished their matches during the big tournament that is going on for 2 weeks.

After the museum we walked a little through the Ryukogu area and had a beer and some yakitori in a small yakitori joint, where we told (pointed to a sentence in a book) the guy behind the desk to bring us some of his recommendations. Some really tasty skewers, some okay-ish. In Ryukugo we bought the local travelcard (Suica), which also works on vendingmachines, and even in shops and headed to Akihabara, which was the closest station on Tokyo's central Yamanoteline. We took almost the entire Yamanote-line to get a feel with the city and it's public transport, got off at Ueno, walked around for a bit there and headed back to our hotelarea to visit a local izakaya (with a English touchscreen menu) for some beers and food to end our first day in Tokyo.

Go to day 3!