To Tokoyo

Uneventful drive to Gimpo airport in the morning and an uneventful flight to Tokyo. There was a Korean boy band on our flight with lots of luggage some handlers. We didn’t find out which band it was. We had a long wait for driver after meeting our guide.

Our guide just finished leading a smaller group of nine people and our group is the largest size at 16 people, so he’ll have his hands full with our large group.

We went to a gastropub under the overhead train tracks for dinner as a group. In Korea, it wasn’t too difficult to find a restaurant worker that spoke a little English and many restaurants had English menus. That isn’t true in Japan. So we’ll mostly go with our guide and he’ll help everyone with ordering. Japanese restaurants also don’t want to split the bill for a large group, so our guide will pay and keep track and we’ll pay him at the end. He’s even set up to take credit cards.

The chicken skewers and ginger fried chicken might have MSG in them, so I only had a very small taste of the fried chicken. The skewers had lots of sauce, so I skipped them.

After dinner, we found a 7-11 a block from our hotel and got 10,000 yen cash. There are two other convenience stores that are a half block away in either direction.

Our hotel room in Korea was normal-sized by western standards. In Japan the rooms are much more compact. Our room is small, but has a double bed and a twin shoved next to each other. There are six inches between the bed and the wall next to window.