Day 1 (part 1): A little lost, a little cold, but all is fine..

Yup, we didn't manage to get the 8:50am Narita Express train direct to Ikebukuro as expected because we all had a sudden panic-attack with a false alarm ("lost" wallet found in a zippered pocket.. HAHA.. YC, you!) and we took longer than we needed to wash up.. The slow-moving queue at the Midori no Madoguchi didn't help either. We ended up taking a slightly later express train to Shinjuku station.

Narita Express to Shinjuku

Waiting to board the Narita Express

Wanted to study during the 1 hour plus ride, but dreamland beckoned me and I gave in to it.

Taken while in the Narita Express

I must have forgotten how temperatures below 15 degrees felt like. Stepping out of the train (at Shinjuku) was like entering into another dimension altogether.. Narnia anyone? Perhaps it was my fault for wearing skirt and tights. I was literally shivering while lugging my luggage around and trying to find my way towards the Yamanote line to get to Ikebukuro.

Finding the west exit at Ikebukuro station was a little perplexing. Perhaps we're not used to seeing both the west exit and east exit being printed together in a centre exit, and we got confused when we saw another sign that said west exit. Or perhaps we're just too cold and not fully awake.

Someone's feeling colder than me.. =P

Alvin's directions to Sakura Hotel were really useful, and we managed to find it in no time. (It was really easy actually, and there were a few other simpler ways getting there.) My mission started once we deposited our luggage at the hotel.

Sakura Hotel Ikebukuro

I had agreed to help Angel get the Ghibli Studios tickets, and the only way to do that was to book via a Loppi machine at Lawson.. The kind staff at Sakura Hotel handed me a map, showed me where the nearest Lawson was, and described how I could go there.

I had sort of taken down the steps of how to use the Loppi machine to book the Ghibli tickets (which can be found here). But I wasn't expecting a screen to tell me to enter a name (in Japanese) and a contact number! Unexpected stuff makes me nervous. It makes me think that I must have done something wrong. But all went well and I managed to get the tickets. (You'll be asked to sign on the printed slip, agreeing that the date/time cannot be changed. And do wait for the cashier to print out the tickets..)

Mission done, and we found this great and cheap place near our hotel for lunch. It specializes in grilled stuffs and it happened that they had some discounts for certain set meals. 600 plus yen for a really filling set meal was just totally worth it.

Where's our food?

XZZ and I ordered the mixed grill set

The guys chose another set meal. Looked yummy too.

After lunch, I wanted to find Kinkadou before my appointment with Kahori, but due to my poor memory, I had forgotten to bring my Tokyo guide book along with me. I knew it was near Sakura-ya, but I just couldn't find it. And that kinda sucked because it meant we had just wasted our 1 hour without really seeing anything.

We went back to our hotel to use the toilet before heading down to Edogawabashi station via the Tokyo-metro subway (Yurakucho line).