After a long but not so long flight, Chris finally arrived at the Tokyo Narita International Airport. The corridor leading to the customs is very long. Fortunately there are automatic walkways. The customs' queue for foreigners was very long. Chris waited for about 30 minutes before it was his turn. The customs officer did not ask Chris anything and let him enter the country. It was a very smooth process.

Getting the luggage was another story. I waited and waited for my luggage but it did not come out from the transportation belt. So I wandered around and saw my luggage was already out and was being placed at the JAL luggage counter. Time was wasted so Chris hurried out to the airport's main lobby to get the limousine bus ticket. It was 3000yen and unfortunately they only accepted cash. So Chris bought the ticket and went outside to wait for the bus to arrive.

Before boarding the bus, the lady was asking Chris about "CHIKIN". Chris said "what?". And then she said it again. Chris was puzzled. Then she used English and say "ticket please". Now Chris finally got it and decided it was time to get the pocket-dictionary out!
The bus ride was quite smooth. It was supposed to be a 90 minute ride but it took 2 hours to arrive at the hotel. Chris was almost the only person on the bus to get out of the bus for this hotel (there were about 30 other people going to another hotel).
When Chris arrived at the lobby, he was greeted by my rommmate Andy. Chris checked in and went up to their room and put his stuff down before heading to meet the big group. Their room was on the 28th floor and it was beautiful scenary seeing the buildings in Ikebukuro. After settling down, Andy & Chris decided to head to find others.

The hotel Chris and group stayed in for the next 3-4 days is called Sunshine City Prince Hotel. Located in the heart of Ikebukuro area, the hotel has a multi-storey underground mall with numerous restaurants and shops geared towards young people. Andy & Chris wandered around the mall and met up with Arnold, the person who speaks the best Japanese in the big group. They wandered around a bit but did not find the other people. So, Arnold took Andy & Chris to the ground and headed to Ikebukuro HMV CD store because they were supposed to meet up there.

Inside Sunshine City (the underground mall), Chris saw the Totoro store and immediately went into it to investigate. They sold everything related to Totoro. Chris was too happy and took many pictures of the store.

At around 8pm, the big group finally arrived. They are Arnold, Cary, Vincent, Gary, Ada and her boyfriend, Hinz, Cedric, Diego(?). I couldn't remember all the names but we were glad to see each other. After spending a little bit of time at HMV, we headed for dinner. It was a bit tough to find a restaurant with 11 seats available, as Japanese restaurants are usually small and did not have that much of space. After some restaurant-searching and trying to meet the requirement of "Cheap, Good, enough seats", we went to a restaurant called "Sakana-Ya" (Fish House). We took our shoes off at the entrance and they gave us a room. It was traditional Japanese-style room and was enough to seat 11. Arnold helped us all order food and drinks. While we waited for the food, everyone shared their love for ZARD and why they came. There were some interesting stories like someone quitted their job to come to this concert. Now that is sacrificial act! Rerex had a DV and captured the whole meeting EXCEPT his own sharing. We decided it was not fair but Rerex insisted he did not need to make himself available to the camera because he is the director and editor :)

The food was okay and Chris did not think he ate enough because he was busy talking. It was a very exciting time for Chris because it was great to see so many ZARD fans at once. We had good conversations talking about ZARD, about music, about our love to Izumi. Anyways, the restaurant's menu was printed extremely nice but when the food came they were small portion. Chris later found out most restaurants are like that: nice menu, good service, ok food, small portion, and very expensive!
After the dinner, it was still early and they decided to wander Ikebukuro a bit. They went into a few of the game centers. The ground floor for all the game centers are always full of dream-catchers (the machines where you try to grab prizes). Lots of schoolgirls and schoolboys filled the floor. The next few floors have many latest arcade games. The top floor always consists of gambling machines like slot machines and horse gambling. The game centers are full of second-hand smoke so it wasn't a very pleasant place to stay for too long.

Hinz & Chris stopped by a drum machine and decided to try their hands on it. Everyone else just watched them as they were playing. It was a fun game. Then, Hinz tried out a game where you grabbed a sword and slash enemies. He did pretty well. It was very bloody though.

After the game centers, we wandered a bit more. Chris forgot where the group wandered to. Before going back to the hotel, Andy & Chris bought some breakfast at a convenience store FamilyMart. Since the package Andy & Chris got did not provide breakfast, it was essential for them to grab something so their stomach would not be too empty to start the day. Before Andy & Chris headed back to their room, they stopped by Arnold's room and Arnold recommended us to go to Yokohama MM21 (since some of us decided not to join the big group for Disneyland). They would need to take the Tokyo subway and it would be a challenge for them because:
1. it was their first time ever to take the Tokyo subway
2. Tokyo subway is the world's most complicated subway system. Even the Japanese locals constantly get lost.
But Chris decided - what the heck! He would be the adventurous guy. And with his broken Japanese he would be ok!

In conclusion, it was a fun but tiring night. Although there was a bit of jet-lag, Chris was excited to be in Tokyo and got the chance to meet up with a bunch of friends whom he only knew on the web before (end of part III).
