Today we traveled from Edmonton Alberta to Tokyo Japan. The flight from Edmonton to Vancouver went well as it was only one hour. Then we stayed in Vancouver airport for 4 hours. As there was a four-hour layover in Vancouver this allowed us to eat lunch. Vancouver has an incredibly beautiful airport and they have an aquarium. It was quiet as we left in the middle of the week. This is the best time to fly as there are less people and the airports are not so busy. Then the Japanese Airline flight came. It was a big plane with an upper cabin. The airplane had a TV and a game control phone that was not extremely high tech; it was more like those in the 1990's. The flight was 9 hours. On these flights it is good to try and sleep as much as possible because then you will have less jet lag. They served us two meals on the flight one was rice with chicken the other meal was a spicy fish sandwich. For the first meal the supper they showed us a picture and we could choose which one we wanted. They do have movies and TV channels to watch in English. When we arrived in Tokyo, we went out of the terminal exits. There are two exits from the plain to the terminal if you take the wrong one like I did you may get lost. Luckily, I was able to find my way.
Then we walked to the train shuttle stop and got on an automatic train that took us to the main terminal. There was cool Japanese art with Kanji (Japanese Characters) on the airport's walls. To get to customs you must go up and down a few floors. At customs they had a fingerprint scan where they scan your fingerprints and a picture is taken when we gave them our passports. We then arrived at the baggage claim to get our two checked bags. However, Air Canada did not send our second bag, which was my parents’ suitcase. The way we found out was there was a sign on the luggage carousel telling us that we had to see the baggage services, so we contacted them and told them to deliver the suitcase to their hotel. This experience of losing bags flying has happened twice with Air Canada as this time they did not put our bags on in Vancouver on time, so our other bag had to go on the next flight. Then we got my dad's Japanese cell phone and train tickets to the Nippori station. When we got on the train and phoned our friend, we were meeting this took several tries. At the time we did not realize till later that talking on the phone in the subway is considered impolite. Then we got to the station, switched trains a few times and I bought a ticket and my parents bought passes an easier way than tickets. With Passes a person puts money on a card and can use it to travel around anywhere and there are machines at the subway stations to purchase passes or put money on them. Then we saw a few sites in the area of the restaurant we had dinner at once we met up with our friend. When we got to the restaurant and had real Sushi. It was quite different as the sushi was way fresher and tastier in Japan than at home in Canada. There was a salad that came with the meal and steamed soybeans where you only eat the beans not the outside. Then we met our friends and gave out gifts. This is a Japanese custom to give gifts to those you meet on the first night there. Then I went to my homestay. The house is like a modern New York apartment except there is a different room for the toilet and a different room for the shower and bath. The shower and bath are like here. The toilet is very advanced and automatic, no need for a button. Also, there is air conditioning in the apartment. The apartment is two bedrooms; it is quite small but almost the same size as the apartments in Canada.
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