This morning we got up for a quick flight to Tokyo.  With the time zone difference it meant we got in around 5pm.

I had wanted to try out the famed Tokyo bullet trains, but instead we ended up on an Airport Limo, aka bus.

For the first part of our trip we went through a lot of countryside.  It looked lush, I saw rice fields and simple houses, and a lot a lot of golf courses and pitch driving ranges.  And thus I was reminded of golf being one of the national sports in Japan.

The shuttle can be as short as 1 hour but we lucked out to arrive during rush hour and it took closer to 100 minutes for our ride.  It was interesting to see that the highway lanes were generally fairly narrow.

I expected Japan to be more modern, with tall packed skyscrapers everywhere.  While the city looked very developed as far as my eye could see, the housing density was less than I expected.  It also looked considerably less modern.  Many trains did not have digital displays.

We arrived to our hotel, checked in, and with jet lag still in full force, passed right out.

The next day we were greeted with rain.  A lot of rain.  Today was the day I learned Tokyo gets 1,530 millimetres of precipitation a year.  Vancouver, which qualifies as a rainforest only gets 1283 mm.  So it was too wet for sightseeing.  And we decided to stay in and work.

Before arriving to Tokyo, I had this expectation of a very high-tech metropolitan city.  I knew that the country was very respectful of tradition, but I did not at all expect it to feel old.  Compared to cities like Hong Kong, the metro station didn’t feel as modern. I suppose that’s what happens if you were early to adopt the tech. For instance, here is a photo of the Honk Kong skyline a few nights before, much more Neo-Tokyo than Tokyo.

Here’s the regular old metro in Tokyo. No holograms anywhere!

There are definitely a lot of vending machines everywhere though.  Lots.  For all sorts of things including tickets to buy ramen.

I also didn’t expect so much grafiti.

So far, Japan seems to be a very interesting juxtaposition of new and old.