---
title: 'Wheels Down at Narita'
date: '2026-03-25 15:40'
template: entry
published: true
hero_image: ''
lat: '35.7720'
lng: '140.3929'
location_city: 'Tokyo'
location_country: 'Japan'
weather_temp_c: 16
weather_desc: 'Sunny'
---

Eleven hours of flight time, two mediocre films, and one surprisingly good noodle dish from the trolley. Then the descent through scattered cloud, the first glimpse of grey-green patchwork below, and that particular feeling when the wheels finally touch down on a continent you have never stood on before.

Narita is large and orderly and very, very calm. Immigration moved faster than any airport I have ever been through. The officer looked at my passport, looked at me, stamped it once, and handed it back without a word. That was it. Entry to Japan.

The Narita Express runs direct to Shinjuku. I found a window seat and spent 90 minutes watching the city materialise from the outside in — rice fields giving way to low housing, then arterial roads, then the sudden verticality of central Tokyo rising up all at once as if someone just switched a setting.

The hotel is small but perfect. A room roughly the width of my arms outstretched, a window looking onto a grey concrete wall, and a bed that feels like sleeping on a cloud. I went out for ramen at a place around the corner where you order from a vending machine and sit at a counter alone with a small wooden partition between you and the next person. Nobody spoke. It was the best meal I have had in months.

Tomorrow: Ueno. The forecast says the cherry blossoms may finally be open.