I hopped off the plane and immediately felt a waft of heat hit me. It felt amazing after being in the cold winter of New Zealand. After waiting in several queues we headed down to the underground train station and bought some tickets for the Narita express.
We took our seats on the train and soon it took off through the darkness. After about 10 minutes of driving through blackness we came out into the open air. Everywhere I looked there were lush green rice paddys. And trees some with pretty flowers but most without. 80 minutes later after stopping at many other places to drop people off we arrived at Shinjuku station where we finally got off the train.
We had been told that we could walk to the hostel where we were staying. After walking and stopping and looking at maps we still couldn’t find where we were supposed to be going. I was hot and my shoulders ached from carrying my heavy bag for so long. In the end we had to catch a taxi because it was already 8pm Japanese time (11pm NZ time).
We eventually reached the hostel. It had a small table outside which 2 woman were sitting on. We had to take our shoes off and put on the slippers that they had. Our room was quite small with 3 sets of bunk beds even though there were only 4 of us. We had some yummy dinner and went to sleep.
