Japan Trip Recap, Day 1

If anyone's planning a trip to Japan, here's a couple interesting things to note regarding arrival at Narita terminal 1.

• Expect to arrive early. When I was doing research for my trip I read that Narita is the most on-time airport in the world. I didn't really believe it though since almost all my flights have been delayed, but as expected, my flight arrived over half an hour early.
  
• Stuff's easy to find. You don't have to wander around. After exiting baggage claim and heading down to the basement you might be wondering where everything is. E.g. information, tickets/reservations, train gate, cell phone rental, etc. It's really easy to find since there's basically just one central area with all these things surrounding.

The plan was to meet my brother in Shinagawa before heading to Kyoto. However, since my flight arrived early I had almost 2 hours to kill by the time I got to Shinagawa. I was really hungry so I decided to get something to eat. I picked a restaurant just outside the station and ordered some katsu curry:

Sorry, this is the only photo I have. I meant to take a photo before I ate it, but when it appeared in front of me I just ended up inhaling it. I didn't realize it then, but I was really being impulsive that day...

I eventually met up with my brother and got tickets for the Shinkansen to Kyoto. Unfortunately, by the time he got tickets there wasn't any reserved seating available. Since I had gotten reserved seating it meant we would have to sit in different cars. So we ended up in different areas waiting for the train. A couple minutes passed and I saw a train with a pointy nose, a bullet train--Shinkansen! I hopped aboard. Moments later I called Ron...

Me: ...where do I put my luggage?

Ron: ...

Ron: ...

Ron: I think you're on the wrong train. Our train hasn't arrived yet.

Me: !!

It was a scary few minutes there as I tried to figure out what to do. I just decided to get off at the very next stop, Shin-Yokohama. Little did I know that I had gotten on the worst possible train--a Kodama. They stop at every single stop all the way to the end of the line. The train that I meant to get on was the Hikari, which makes infrequent stops. There was a possibility that the Hikari wouldn't even stop there. Luckily for me all three shinkansen (Kodama, Hikari, and Nozomi) stop at Shin-Yokohama.

Fortes fortuna adiuvat (fortune favors the bold)...or the incredibly stupid? I'll pick the former since it sounds cooler. Anyways, I almost missed the Hikari again. Just as I called to ask Ron when it was going to arrive he said that they'd just gotten there? I thought that was weird since I didn't see a train in front of me. As I spun around I saw the rest of the train station behind me. It never occured to me that there may be several different platforms for the same tracks. Again, as luck would have it, I was already on the right platform so I finally boarded the right shinkansen for Kyoto. Good thing I rented a cell phone at the airport. I can only imagine how things would've turned out if I hadn't.

We stayed at a ryokan, Station Hotel Seiki.

Our room.

Ron posing for sleep.

Yogurt pepsi?