Left Kuala Lumpur from via Malaysia Airlines MH88. Flight left on time (surprising for Malaysia Airlines). Flight duration is 6:40 mins and landed in Tokyo about 7:15am. Surprisingly the temperature here is a good 23 degrees. Far cry from the expected low 10s!
Getting the reserved SIM card
First port of call is to pickup the SIM card that I ordered from Sakura Mobile. Pretty expensive but I wanted to have a more stable connection. Paid almost JPY22000! Crazy. The process of picking up the SIM card was easy, as I just needed to go to the post office, and show my tracking number and verify myself with my passport. With that the person will then pass me the package that contains the sim. Once I have the sim, I then installed on my phone. All is working fine now!
Moving on to Rail Pass
I bought the rail pass in Malaysia through the Japanese Travel Bureau (JTB) thats located in Lot 10. Apparently you can only by the pass from overseas but what I found out is that you CAN buy the pass in Japan but the price will be much more expensive. There’s a savings of roughly 10%.
Narita Express to Tokyo Station
Once I gotten the rail pass, I quickly booked a train on NEX (Narita Express) at 9.15am, to get to Tokyo Station. From Tokyo Station – I can take my next train to Nagano.
Lunch at Tokyo Station
At Tokyo Station – there is this place located on 1st Floor – which is called Kitchen Street. Similar to the concept of food court, you can get mostly Japanese local food there. I was toying around the idea of going for a pure Uni bowl, or should I go for Ochazuke. I did go for Ochazuke, and I thought that was a great decision!
Then to Nagano
Utilising the rail pass again, booked a ticket on the Shinkansen heading towards Nagano. Its almost a 2 hours ride. The Shinkansen that I took is the Hokuriku Shinkansen that left Tokyo Station at 12:04pm (train 609) and reached Nagano at 13:53pm. As always – there weren’t any surprises!
I am too tired to continue – will do day 1 tomorrow morning.. maybe