Monday, July 27, 2009

Roshan's internship gave Rosh the choice of doing it in New York and part of it in Tokyo/London. Rosh picked Tokyo. After his internship we thought we could take some time off and tour Japan. So here I am, in Tokyo, the start of my 2 week vacation this summer.I flew in from Seattle to Japan last night, it was a 9 hour flight - not so long international flight for somebody who's been flying internationally between US & India mostly :-)

Unlike my other flights, where the advise it to sleep as much as possible on the flight, this time I didn't sleep at all on the flight. That helped coz after dinner I could fall asleep like other folk here. So jetlag has been gracefully handled.

The first thought when I got off the flight was 'whoa this is warm'. People starting taking layers of clothing off on the walkway. When I finally stepped out on the street to get some food, it was after sunset and still super-warm. Very much like Indian summers.

I am quite puzzled about how the subway stations, roads, sidewalks etc are so clean. There is no trace of trash, paper, wrappers nothing... And there are no trash cans or bins visible. I am hoping in the next 5 days of stay here I can figure out how this is possible.

I am staying in Central Tokyo (Shimbashi) and the view from our room (on the 34th floor) is breathtaking. I think I may have brought some of the Seattle rain here. It rained today and the forecast shows temperatures as 30C (~80F) with showers/clouds rest of the week. Hopefully it will not interfere too much with the sightseeing & exploring plans.

The plan is that after this week in Tokyo, Roshan and I will leave this saturday for Nikko. 2 days in Nikko, 2 days in Kyoto, 2 days in Nara and 2 days in Hakone. Then ofcourse fly back to seattle.

Stay tuned.

Monday, July 27, 2009 3:37:29 AM (US Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [6]Trackback