Day 1: Arrival in Tokyo

Day 1:
After a 13 hour flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo, Arrived at Narita International Airport at around 5PM. Customs/Inspection/Getting a Visa took about an hour. Finally got out to the area where I met up with Alex after not seeing him since August. Found out that Narita isn't actually in Tokyo, pretty damn far from Tokyo actually, took us 2 hours to get to Hotel Accela which is in "Minami-Senju". We both learned that Japan has a very different understanding of "hotel" than we do. We did not have rooms, we had large boxes (you can read more in my review of the hotel). So Minami-Senju was the first place in tokyo that i stepped foot, and it wasn't a good vibe I got... We got to the hotel around 8pm, prepaid for 3 nights before seeing rooms, dropped our stuff off, went to walk around the area and get food. Alex told me that in his 4+ months in Japan, this was the shadiest place he'd ever seen. We walked around to find most food places to be closed as it was a quieter area of Tokyo and it was already 9pm or so. Finally found a place, didn't look very appetizing, but we were hungry. We walked in, it was fairly empty, the place had a karaoke machine and a drunken japanese man was using it. We ordered food, I ordered chicken strips and a salad and alex ordered some fishy food (something i didnt consider before coming to Japan, is that I'm allergic to seafood, so I was kinda screwed for a lot of the trip). They literally took our food out of a freezer, and stuck it in a microwave, atleast in mcdonalds, they dont show you. this guy, did it right in front of our face. and there was a roach on the counter 2 inches from my plate as I was eating. CULTURE SHOCK! (although alex told me Japan isn't normally like that, we were just in a very "dodgey" area (picked that up in London, dodgey=shady=sketchy, etc.) Got back to the hotel around 10-11pm after walking around a bit more and passed out.