We
left London in mid-afternoon, and quickly caught up with the night
as we flew east over the North Sea, and out over Scandanavia. We
flew for hours through the night, although through our north facing window,
we could see sunlight leaking from your side of the world over the North
Pole. Finally, the sky went totally dark, and soon enough, we caught
up with the sunrise. It was quite a sight at 31,000 feet as the sun
rose over Siberia. Several hundred hours later, we landed in Narita
Airport, north of Tokyo, and in a flash we were in our hotel, thrilled
to finally be able to take a shower.
After
having traveled 36 hours, catching only a hour or two of sleep, we did
some sleepwalking around our hotel. Our slow pace was a clear annoyance
to the busy locals trying to get around us, but we were moving as fast
as we could. It seems that we can communicate reasonably well, but
the lack of readable street signs was a little unnerving. This photo
is the lobby of our hotel, the Ginza Tobu Renaisance Hotel. Not a bad little
place.
The
bigger the building, the bigger the nose of the person being photographed
in front of it. As you can see, I had to face the camera so that
I did not block out the entire view. Our hotel is in the Ginza shopping
district which is where all the large department stores are. That's
where we ran into an old friend that some of you might recognize (see right).
Then we made our way to the Hibiya Gardens and walked around the Imperial Palace. The Royal Family is currently in residence so the Palace and inner grounds are not open to the public. Surrounding the entire complex of palace and gardens though is a tremendous black stone wall, punctuated with these beautiful white gatehouses and stone bridges over a massive moat.
