Friday night/ arrived in Tokyo

Our flight left 3 hrs late!  with two returns to the gate needed, the last to fix a broken Pitot tube.  (Let me not mention Air France 447 but now that I did, I think they will find out if the Pitot tubes were actually responsible for the crash now that they recovered the flight recorders. )

So some people missed their connections in Tokyo, but that gave me time to fix my hotel reservation which I discovered just before boarding, had me arrive Thu night instead of Friday.    I called the hotel in Tokyo from the plane parked at the gate, after getting the correct country code + area code from a woman called Debbie who says people call her all the time asking if it’s the hotel.   So sorry! I said.

The train station picture is my arrival at Tokyo station, that’s the Narita Express on the left.   Check the Do Not Rush! instruction on the pillar (you will stumble and crash into the train or fall onto the tracks – not good).    So then I used my Suica card to take the regular subway train to Ginza – only thing was, there is a Ginza station on three lines, and I picked the wrong one.     So I ended up quite a walk from the hotel.      When I finally re-located myself and the hotel on my map – not easy with the translations and street names – three cabs in a row refused to take me there even though I pointed to it on the map.    Two friendly passers-by* explained that they are all waiting at the bars and hotels for the midnight/ 1 am start time when they can picked up people in the Ginza district.    I’d have to walk to a taxi station.    But anyway, the hotel is probably just as far, and they pointed me to a street corner, take a right, and walk for 10 mins.    And there the happy sight of the Tokyo Ginza Marriott was at last.    *It is true : Tokyo people are very helpful and very friendly!

The last three pictures are of my midnight walk .. I have to say Tokyo’s luxury stores are not nearly as glitzy and ostentatious as they are in Hong Kong (and Shenzhen for that matter).       The city is also in a power conservation mode and not all the night lights for the buildings are switched on (or maybe it was too late at night when I walked by).   The taxis outnumber regular cars by 10 to 1.    There are almost no private vehicles to be seen on the streets.

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