Exploring Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan (B)

During the summer holidays in New Zealand we would usually be sailing our boat Wildwood up to the Marlborough Sounds and cruising around with our friends for a few weeks. This year however our friends James & Elisa asked us if we would like to join them in Japan for an adventure there instead.

It has been a long time since I have visited Japan. I came here when I was 17 and stayed with a Japanese family for a few weeks, and then came a number of other times with my ex-husband who used to travel to Japan every month buying cars to import in to New Zealand. But that must be about 15 years ago now, so I was keen to come back and explore some more.

We flew out on Christmas evening on an overnight flight. It is about 11 hours from Auckland and that got us in to Tokyo Narita airport early on Boxing Day morning.

We had our ski gear with us and didn’t fancy carrying it along with us so we used one of the freight forwarding services to send it on to our hotel in Hokkaido. You tell them when you are going to be arriving and they hold it and deliver it to the hotel the day before you arrive – all for about NZD$30.00 ish per bag! ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).