I found the train office in Tokyo and tried to get my future tickets printed.  For two of the tickets they told me they couldn’t print them and I could get them in Kyoto.  I wrote “get in Kyoto” across the receipt so I wouldn’t forget later when I got to Kyoto.  For the other one, the guy kept telling me I needed the QR code, but I never received the QR code and didn’t know how I was going to pull off getting one. I stepped out of line to see if I could figure it out on my phone. 

I did!  I found the QR code on the website I had ordered from.  I got back in line to get my tickets.  Then I was told I use the QR code to get on the train.  That was lost in translation before.  My trip from Akihabara Station to Tokyo Station, therefore, was completely not necessary, but I did feel slightly more prepared for those upcoming days.

Next order of business was to find dinner.  I walked out of the train station and then did a search for restaurants.  There was a brew pub near by.  At this point I had been up for 21 hours and was out of bandwidth to walk far, make decisions or eat strange things.  A brew pub sounded good.  Maybe I could get something easy and head back to my hotel.

I turned left and walked around the corner.  Oh, I went the wrong way.  I turned around and went the other way.  Very quickly I was going the wrong way again.  How did I miss it?  How was I so turned around?  Then I looked up – there was a set of stairs and some lights on the second floor.  The brew pub was on the second floor right above where I had come out of the station.  It was a tiny place with maybe room for 15 people.  The menu was very small, mostly snack items that were cold.  I was done and decided this wasn’t real Japanese food, but it was going to be just perfect because I was there and not extremely hungry.  I ordered the ham plate.  It had four types of ham and I washed it down with a ginger ale.  The formula for this is 21 Awake Hours + 12 hour flight + 3 Train Rides + 17 Train Tickets = Ham Plate.