Irrashaimasu! First night in tokyo

The flight from Sweden took off at 6pm local time and arrived 6pm local time in Japan. I tried Air China this time with transit in Beijing. Im pretty satisfied with the flight, it was nothing special..no tv available in front of the seats and the food was nothing special. The good thing was that the plane only where half full so there was plenty of space for sleeping during the night flight. In the seat beside me a woman who was part of the Volvo Ocean Race was sitting. She was in the swedish team sailing with the Ericsson boats. She told me they where going to join the boat in Qingdao,China to go from there to Rio.

There where not many people on the airport in Beijing. I think it was because of the celebrating of new year in China at that time.

I had to wait a couple of hours for my transit flight to Tokyo. I met a japanese guy who where on his way to Thailand for vacation a year..good life! well, I wont complain either hehe..cause i where going to JAPAN! Japan, that I only had seen on television and tv-games.. I imagined to walk into a very diferent world of big skyscrapers, strange smooky streets and a lot of computers/videogames.

I was also looking forward to meet my friend Hiro who I met in Mexico 2 years before. He was going to meet me at the airport and let me stay at his apartment in Chiba,Tokyo a couple of days. Thats good cause it saved me a lot of money. On the flight to Tokyo I spoke to some chinese people and tried to practise my mandarin, but I realized I had learned some cantonese instead :P , Anyways the flight went well and it was raining in Tokyo when we arrived.

I met my friend and we took the train towards his place.

It was intresting sitting beside japanese people in the train. Even if I was the only foreigner no one really looked at me as people often should have done in another country. It felt good to just melt in to the crowd even if I was taller then everyone. Hehe I have been told before that japanese people easy can take a nap whenever wherever, and that was true..people was sitting, standing or hangin halfsleeping everywhere. After a while in Japan I started become the same.

After dropping the bag in Hiros apartment we went out to find someplace to eat in the streets of Chiba. It did´nt take long until a guy convinced us to come to his place. Irrashaimasu! he said with loud voice, grabbed a big knife, big as a machete, and started to say something in japanese.

I had studied some before but not more then basics hehe. We ordered many different small plates to share. "Hiyakitori" & Tebasaki, pieces of barbequed chicken, fish or meat on sticks and without sticks.Some sashimi aswell. And the first well deserved cold beer! I had been looking forward to drink a beer. Kirin beer, I liked it very much. I tried many dishes that night, it was very intresting start of my trip. We went to another bar after for some more food and drinks. Because of the long trip & jetlag the alcohol had fast effect on my brain :D