Tokyo, Day 1

The trip over from Chicago to Narita airport was pretty swanky. The Foodwife and I took the  biz-class upgrade via our awesomeness and rode across the sea like Li'l Nemo on his magic bed. The nice thing about biz class is a nearly unlimited supply of free booze. I suppose there was some pretty decent food, but I wasn't hungry and I felt like they were force feeding me. The douche across the aisle was snapping instagram shots of every dish they brought him. Sure, the food was pretty good, but I'm so fucking sick of this 'food-picture' shit. Stop. Just stop.

Let's see if I have any pix of the the food on the plane trip...hm. Nope. When they came with the food service, pretty much the minute we were in the air, they we're all like, "Would you like some wine?"
I said, "What do I look like a fucking Morman? Of course I want some wine."
"Oh, would you like the white or the.."
Pointing at the closest bottle, "That one. White."
"Do you prefer a drier white, or a fruitier white."
"That one. It looks like it's open already. Give me some of that. And a scotch."

For crying out loud, I'm on an airplane, you think you're going to have anything better than three-buck chuck? Don't waste my time, this is booze time on United, not some kind of trancendental foodie experience.

Anyway, it was good, I got sauced and passed out. I'm sure some other stuff happened, but pretty much the flight was smooth and they treated us pretty well.

When we landed, it was pretty much dark, and cloudy, so the only thing I saw on the Limosine Bus into Tokyo was a huge ferris wheel. That's all I know about that.
The bus dropped us off at the Shibuya Excel hotel and we got a taxi to our rinky-dink hotel somewhere in the Shibuya strip, Hotel Unizo. It was actually really nice and everyone was super friendly, even when I refused to acknowledge they were speaking to me in Japanese.

I've finally found the entrance to my relaxation area!

We put our stuff down and hit the street in search of some vittles. Unfortunately we had no money.

So, here's the thing about Japan. I didn't see any ATMs in the airport. I probably didn't look hard enough, but we were also in a hurry to get out of there. Walking around Shibuya, we only found a few in the 7-11s and Family Marts. These little toys only take Japanese style debit cards, so we were screwed. Finally, we found a Citi Bank with an actual ATM and we pulled out some cash. Of course it was 9:30 at night now and we were starving, so we hit the first noodle shop we saw.

I'm sure it had a name, but I couldn't tell you what it was. There's this vending machine thing by the door and you put your money in, hit a button and pray to god you get something decent. I got lucky and had an exquisite noodle soup with some chewy mushrooms things and some crunchy bean-type things. The Foodwife got a miso noodle soup and said mine was better. I told her to wise up and then I finished my soup. This place was playing the complete Nirvana Nevermind album. I can't tell you the last time I heard that thing, but it was nice.

Then we went to a place called Goodbeer Draftplace, or something like that, and had a pint of some Japanese micro brew, the Foodwife had a cider. It was ok. The cider wasn't sweet, but it also wasn't quite grungy enough for my tastes. The beer was decent, but when you're the Fooder, you drink a lot of beer and frankly, I've kind of had it with all the hoppy stuff and basically preferred drinking Sapporo and Asahi the whole time.

After that it was time for the sleeping. We crashed hard and it was only 11pm or something.