Day 1: A retrospective

Okay, its actually day 3 at the moment of my first ever travel, hanging out in Tokyo, Japan. I've been running around ragged, as you might have guessed, so I haven't had the time to make a proper update to my blog, which I really just created for this purpose. So, for the time being, I'm going to do a series of retrospectives until I'm caught up with present time.

Day 1:

So, I stayed up overnight on Tuesday night to drive up to L.A. with my mother early in the morning, as my flight out of L.A. was 7 am. As its a two hour drive to L.A. from San Diego, and I needed to get there a couple hours early, so, we just headed out at around 1:30am, and stopped by a Denny's for a bit. I was pretty tired, as I hadn't really slept the previous day either, and apparently I fell asleep for a big chunk of the ride. I didn't feel this was the case, but the fact that it seemed as though we arrived in L.A. much sooner than we should have stands as a bit of evidence to the contrary.

After downing some rancid coffee at Denny's, we went to the airport. It was actually earlier than 5am, but we first went to the wrong terminal, so we had to press on a bit further; nevertheless, the place was almost empty. Getting there early was still probably the best choice, but, I did in fact have to wait most of those two hours in the lobby area outside my gate, as opposed to waiting to go through security and what have you.

So, I got on the plane, and took a trip to Vancouver. That was a pretty easy ride, and it was pretty cool landing in another country for the first time in my life, even if I didn't have enough time to get out of the airport and see any of the city. From overhead, coming in, though, it looks like it'd be a beautiful place to spend time outdoors.

It was a three hour layover, and then a nine hour flight to Tokyo. By that time, I had been awake (mostly) for the better part of 36 hours, and I was starting to feel it, so I tried my best to sleep on the jumbo jet, but I'm just not mentally equipped for that sort of thing. Perhaps if I had more practice . . .

A word on that jumbo jet: I know some of you probably have already experienced them, but man! They really are big! Crazy stuff. This was on Japan Airlines (JAL), and so all the cabin announcements were in Japanese first, though they had English translations as well, and additionally, sometimes Chinese and even Korean.

The inflight entertainment was a system called something like JET or JEM or something. I think it was JES. It stood for Japan Airlines (JAL) Entertainment System.

Think that over a second.

They had an acronym inside an acronym.

JAL Entertainment System.

Shouldn't that be against the rules or something?

Anyway, so I zombied through those nine hours. They passed in an eternal daze, where 2 hours felt like 10, but 10 hours didn't feel so long. At the end of the ride, in the last fifteen minutes or so, the poorly named inflight entertainment system shut off, and all screens switched to what they called a "Bird's View Camera", which was mounted underneath the front of the jet, so we could see the clouds breaking beneath us as we descended. In a few minutes, I looked out the window of my aisle, and caught my first glimpse of the land of the rising sun.

Some of you know some of the circumstances involved in me coming here originally, and how it turned to quite the problem not long ago. A storm of thoughts of this, combined with experiencing flying to a foreign country for the first time (the stop in Vancouver was a bit more academic), combined with not knowing anyone who would meet me when I landed, and also knowing that for the first time, I was going to see a place and culture I had spent so much time with, getting the chance for the first time ever in my life to apply all my time studying other places and systems, became a brutal concotion ( as well as a brutal run on sentence ). I wept for those next 15 minutes, terrified, excited beyond belief, and everything in between. Once I got off the plane, things didn't really let up. I knew I was soon going to face immigration, and I was technically breaking the rules on entering the country (sorry mom).

As an American citizen, I'm allowed to be in Japan for up to 90 days without a visa. However, to do so, I'm supposed to show proof of either onward travel during those 90 days or a return ticket. I had neither, as I've been planning on going to Korea via ferry from Japan, and you can't buy tickets for that ferry online, only either via phone (which I think lacks English language support) or via stations in Japan.

Therefore, I would technically be breaking the rules upon trying to enter Japan. What a great way to start off a live of travelling, eh?

As luck would have it, the immigrations officer didn't seem to be too concerned with it; I rather suspect she saw through my pathetic disguise and saw me for the unseasoned-young-traveller-from-America-that-didn't-really-know-what-I-was-doing that I really am.

There were no other problems getting out of Narita airport. As I waited to gather my luggage, a woman who had sat in my aisle was standing near to me. I hailed her down, and spoke to her at length about my situation. She took sympathy on my plight and offered me her daughter's phone number (she herself was en route to stay with her daughter for a time), in case I ran into any major troubles. I was rather touched by this, given that she didn't really know me at all.

Nevertheless, I tried to at least bear through the beginning of things on my own. Stepping out of the airport into the train terminal itself was bewildering; although now, the Tokyo metro system comes as second nature to me, just a scant 60 hours ago, it was a jigsaw puzzle where I couldn't even make out the differences in the border patterns.

Tokyo knows this, however, and employs a large number of English-speaking personnel to guide newcomers through the beginnings of the system. I had to use a currency exchange for the first time, and soon I was on my way towards my hostel, located in Jimbocho, which is around the middle of the greater metropolitan area of Tokyo.

Except, I got on the wrong train. Scheize!

This was soon corrected, though, and I wasn't much the worse for the mistake. It probably made me 20 minutes later to Jimbocho than I otherwise would have been, and that's really not so awful.

Just because I got to Jimbocho just fine, though, was no reason to think I could find my way to my hostel properly.

After walking around 2 hours, with a gigantic heavy backpack, camera bag, and a messenger back that had a laptop and a few notebooks in it, with the assistance of probably close to a dozen locals, who mostly didn't speak so much as a word of English, I finally found my way to the place. After settling in, I wasn't really in much of a mood to go exploring at all. It was probably close to 8pm.

There was a small cafe in the front of the hostel, though, open 24 hours, and I relaxed there with a soda or cup of coffee or some such thing. There were a few Irish people seated next to me, and after 20 minutes or so, I eventually butted my way into their conversation, and over the next couple hours, as they bought themselves round after round of beers, they included me in it, though they proffered me Coca-Cola as an alternative, as they found out quite early on of my drinking habits, and after a few hours of just shooting the shit in every topic imaginable, we moved things outside, and met a British girl as well, and the 6 of us all wandered over to a Karaoke bar nearby, where I acted as a translator for the lot of them to try to figure out how much they could drink for the rate they were paying. It didn't go quite as smoothly as I would have liked, but I still managed to give an accurate translation, so that was pretty sweet.

By 4am, things were winding down, and the British girl in particular looked down and out, and announced that she was going to go back to the hostel. It was raining slightly, and I was tired anyway, so I figured I'd accompany her on the walk back, and we spoke at length on the topic of why she was down and out. I won't get into the details of it here, as it was rather personal, but I hope that things have since worked out for her. Half an hour and a heart to heart later, we both retired to our separate dorms, and I fell asleep pretty damn fast. I was exhausted.