Tokyo - early impressions and getting around

My first destination is Tokyo, where I’m going for a business trip. This means that even though I’m spending full week in Japan my ability to explore is limited to weekend, early mornings and late nights.

Mori tower

I arrived at Narita airport and I cleared customs and passport control in under 30 minutes after I left the plane. I decided to take the bus (also known as limo-bus) to the Intercontinental hotel, where I was staying. Hotel is located in Minato part of the city, close to the both Imperial palace and Tokyo tower as well as, most importantly, office complex in Mori tower (where I’ll be working from) in neighborhood Roppongi hills.

Expressway roads are built on three levels but with only a couple of lanes in each direction. Most of driving-based transportation happens on those roads but once you are in the neighborhood you’ll have to go through narrow streets that break unexpectedly. Most of the time you’ll not be getting around the city that way anyhow - it’s slower and taxi and rideshare services are very expensive - easily be 20 times more expensive than metro.

Taxi and Uber drivers offer amazing service, likely because given price point they mostly attract executive clientele. They all wear suits and ties and a lot of them even wear black gloves. All of the cars are super nice - in fact, lowest class of Uber you can order is Uber black.

Since you’ll not be driven around, a word of warning about metro stations. They are huge and they typically have multiple exits that are even kilometers apart. It’s important to study the map of the station carefully before you leave it, since there is a huge cost in getting out on the wrong exit from the station.

Walking around is also great option. Note that cars drive on the left side of the road which does not seem a big deal until you are crossing the street; as someone raised in a place where cars drive on the right side, my natural instinct is to look left and then right when crossing the street which is exactly wrong. So is my (learned) instinct to stick to the right side of the sidewalk - similar to the cars, people walk on left side of the street.

Few of many vending machines

One thing I did not realize before coming here is how much Japanese love their vending machines. They are, quite literally, everywhere. I was most surprised when I realized that free snacks and drinks provided in offices are actually coming from vending machine (which will not accept my money, as all snacks are free, defeating the purpose of a vending machine).