Tokyo - Day 1 - 14th February 2017

Late September in 2016 my husband and I snapped up some cheap Jetstar tickets into Sapporo for about $300 per person return from Cairns. We found a great sale from Brisbane to Cairns and tickets came in very cheaply - in fact, cheaper than some travel in Australia, such as to Adelaide or Perth from Brisbane. What made the deal sweeter was that the tickets on sale were around the time of our 10 year anniversary.

Our official anniversary was on the 10th of February. 10 years of adventures together.

4 days later, we boarded a jet plane to Cairns, had a short stroll between domestic and international and then boarded another plane to Tokyo. Flight time between Cairns and Tokyo is only about 7 hours and I think we managed to get into Tokyo early. We had some good winds or something. My husband and I always book seats at the back of the plane, because other people are less willing to sit up at the back. It usually means we can get 3 seats to ourselves, which we had on the flight to Tokyo, At just after 5pm in the afternoon (Japan time) we arrived into Narita airport. Passport Control and Customs moved fairly quickly, so less than half an hour later we were on the outside of the building, finding our bus stop to take the shuttle to our hotel, as we weren't continuing on to Sapporo until early the next morning.

Tokyo was definitely a lot colder than Australia (which had hit 37 to 38 degrees in Brisbane in the days before we left) and we shivered a bit as we dragged our bags behind us on the route from Terminal 2 to Terminal 3. 

Our hotel for the night was Nikko Narita, which we had actually booked last time we went to Japan, but never got to stay in due to a days delay with Jetstar. The rooms were quite nice.

We had arrived on Valentines day, and in Japan the female gives the male chocolate on Valentines Day. Men reciprocate a few months later on White Day. Nikko Narita had a Lawson mini-mart on ground level, so we made a quick pit stop there so I could buy Hugh some cheap Meiji chocolate.

We had dinner in the cafe next to the Lawson Mart, before taking a wander around the hotel grounds. 

We pushed open the door to the back outside area of the hotel and walked into a beautiful light wonderland. Rows of dazzling lights lined a tunnel, and the grounds were covered in various coloured twinklers. We walked amongst the glow for a while until my hands became numb and I had to escape back inside.

Inside the much toastier building, we turned to the right to see another restaurant in the hotel. Outside the hotel stood a cute service robot, barely thigh height. A small boy was conversing with the 'Pepper' robot. Pepper's bright blue, large, animated eyes followed him wherever his energetic body moved. Watching the exchange I began to forget that Pepper wasn't human; he had the qualities of a small child himself. Hugh was still outside taking photos of the lights as I watched the child banter with the robot. As the child stood closer, Pepper gently put his arm around the child and drew him closer to caress his shoulder in the manner a friend would. It was oddly beautiful to watch.

Pepper robot. NOTE: This is not my pic. I did not want to be that creepy person taking photos of random kids. Instead, I just steal them off the world wide web.

As the child said his goodbyes, Hugh arrived back inside, shivering, and we made our way up to our room for a quick sleep before getting up early (4am early) to catch our connecting flight to Sapporo.