First impressions of Tokyo

 First of all here's the view from my hotelroom:

 The tall building in the middle is the tall one on the right in the 2nd zoomed in picture.

 

The tall building just left of the middle behind the crane is the one on the very left in the 3rd zoomed in picture.

This picture is 42x zoom.

That's pretty much how big Tokyo is. Even on the 3rd 42x zoom picture there's buildings as far as the eye can see. Furthermore all of the buildings are flats or skyscrapers. This city is truly MASSIVE!!!

Yet I also think it's very spacious. Outside on the streets there's a lot of space and even a lot of trees in certain parts. The city's also filled with viaducts and in general the roads and streets are just beautiful. In general I have to say this is BY FAR the most beautiful city I've ever seen.

I had expected Tokyo to be crazy busy, but actually it's quieter than London. Maybe it's because there's more space, but overall I find the vibe very relaxed and it hasn't been busy at all so far. Maybe so far I've just seen the relatively quiet parts of the city centre though.

The plane ride was very good too. I was sitting inbetween 2 Japanese girls and I talked to one of them for at least 4 hours or so. Maybe 20-30 minutes in Japanese and then the rest in English. Her english was excellent, because she was married to an english guy and living in London. Furthermore I got 3 hours of sleep twice, which was amazing!!!

Food's been so-so so far. I've eaten at a 24hr place twice so far, because I had to eat breakfast before 7 AM twice. The first one was so-so, the 2nd one was excellent considering it only cost me 3 pounds. Hopefully the locals I'm meeting up with today and tomorrow can show me where to eat some good food.

Last but not least, I'm SUPER SUPER happy I've studied Japanese for ~6 months. With no or few Japanese skills I don't know how anyone could manage here. I had heard the subway system was easy to navigate for foreigners, but very complicated in my opinion. Think I have it somewhat figured out though now after 1 day and with my Japanese skills. Also google maps is a MUST!!!

Restaurants aren't any different. The places I've been to thusfar noone spoke any english. Luckily I managed, but still a little inconvenient.

Oh and it is definitely true that there's almost no foreigners in this country. I think the last non-Japanese person I saw was ~ 26 hours ago. 

I'll start taking my camera with me starting today and hopefully take a lot more pictures of various things. I'm gonna go shower now and meet up with someone in 2.5 hours.

Frank.