Japan, the first installment
Aug. 23rd, 2006 12:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
like_a_clownSo. I've been back from Japan for eight days now. Other than a couple more days of exhaustion and sleepless nights than I anticipated, it was a pretty smooth transition, and I'm back to fantasizing about living elsewhere and stuff.
The trip was more tiring than I'd anticipated. I knew it was going to be hot as hell, but he planned tours didn't sound all that strenuous -- half-day bus trips around Tokyo and Kyoto and a bus tour around Mt. Fuji and Lake Ashi -- and we had plenty of free time and nice hotels. Easy, right?
Not so fast.
The night before we left -- the night of Wednesday, Aug. 2 -- I didn't sleep. I lay down for something like ten minutes, but I'd spent all night finishing my packing, ripping CDs to my iPod, sorting out paperwork for my mom to mail while I was gone, and otherwise keeping busy. We got up and went to John Wayne Airport with just one smallish suitcase and a carryon each. Security, blah blah, screwdrivers and Bloody Marys for breakfast, yada yada, all our luggage in the overhead bin (no baggage claim in Tokyo! Woohoo!), and it's off to San Jose and then the connection to Tokyo.
International flights are really boring, but I did get a cute picture of my sacked-out sister. I didn't sleep.
We landed in Tokyo about . . . what, 18 hours after leaving my house. Straight through customs, and a nice lady in a suit was waiting for us with a sign with our names. That's the first time I recall that ever happening to me. It was neat. Equally neat: the exit signs in all the buildings have a little man running through a door, and many of the manhole covers are neatly decorated, with stuff like cherry blossoms or dump trucks. The woman walked us like twenty feet to our bus and when it came we got on. It was around 4 p.m. by then, and we were kind of dragging. The bus was going like 50 miles per hour, too, which shocked me a little -- the weirdest part about highway traffic wasn't the driving on the left, but that everyone seemed more or less to obey speed limits. We passed a few rural towns with lots of vegetation, some highish-rise hotels (The Rainbow Hotel, Andrea said, had a different color for every floor), and Tokyo Disney (I think we saw that famous castle tower from far-off), and gradually the buildings started being replaced by bigger and bigger warehouses and distribution hubs, and then high-rises, and then overpasses and stuff, and we were in Tokyo.
I didn't think much of it at first, but then, we didn't pass through any really interesting areas on the way in. We got off the highway and passed through a bunch of surprisingly non-gigantic streets -- nothing like the seven-lane monstrosities I cross all the time in the I.E. -- lined with 7-Elevens, AM/PMs, coffee houses (Doutor being maybe the most common -- it seems to be the Tokyo Coffee Bean, or maybe Peet's or something) and other normal businesses and buildings. Kind of labyrinthine, not very grid-like, pretty nice and mellow was my first impression driving through at 6:30. We were headed for the Takayama Prince Hotel, right across and a little up the way from Shinagawa Station.
We checked in and a very nice young woman in the uniform beige skirt and white blouse (I think it was) led us to our room. She explained that the button next to the door turned on or off all the lights, that the clipboard was for marking what you drank from the minibar, that the safe was there for us to use, and all kinds of other little details, before bowing and wishing us a nice trip. We were bouncing around like little kids, checking out the cool garden out the window, discovering the cotton kimonos that were in a drawer for us to wear, spreading out in the surprisingly spacious room with three surprisingly normal beds, fretting a little about whether we should've taken our shoes off at the door. (There were, after all, slippers.)
And then the girls discovered the toilet seat.
This thing is a marvel of modern engineering. Want toasty buns? You got it. Dirty butt? Your choice: spray or stream. In for an embarrassingly noisy few minutes? The thing plays a soothing running-water noise, much like on those sound-effects CDs you see in cheesy gift shops and Target. (Well, the one in Kyoto -- or was it Tokyo Hotel No. 2, the Sakura Ryokan? -- did. I think this one was the same model.)
And the flat-screen TV had all the cartoon weirdness, and my sister found Domokun and Doraemon (I think he's called), and we just squealed and rolled around in the coolness for a while.
Eventually, it was time for dinner. We walked outside, down the street ("Where should we go?" "I saw shopping on the way in, on the bus. That was that way."), passed more neat manhole covers and little apartment buildings in small back streets, until we came out on to the main drag and the mall.
On the way, this dude and his kids were passing us, and the kid had an Angels T-shirt on. I'd been up for something like 52 hours at this point, so I just shouted, "Hey, you guys from Orange County?" Turns out that no, but they were from Thousand Oaks, and the guy's cabinetry business is right next to Andrea's mom's workplace. We chatted for a minute, but we were hungry, much like the wolf, so we continued on.
Thus began what became a ritual: "What do you want?" "I don't know, anything sounds good." "How about there?" "I can't read the menu." "Me neither. You think they'll have anything for Rick?" "Oh, damn, that thing is like 3,000 yen." Next! Repeat.
We found the food court. We also found the curry stand. We also found the beverage island, featuring beer, sake and more beer. (And melon soda for Jenny.) The beer lady -- probably no more than 21 -- drew our small beers and gave Jenny and me each a scratcher. Mine was a flop, but Jenny's had a kanji character on it. I held it up with what I hoped was an inquisitive face, and the girl said something and pointed to the sign. Which was written in more kanji. She pointed to my beer, and when I still didn't get the message, she walked off and got our sake (I wanted Jenny to try it). I got bold when she came back and just thrust the thing at her with a big smile, and she went and got me a third beer -- this one a gigantor mug of the same lager.
Curry. Oh my God, Japanese curry. It's not like Indian curry. They serve you a plate half-covered in white rice -- the fluffy kind, compared to sushi rice or some such -- and half-covered in brown liquid with chunks of whatever you ordered in it. (This meant vegetables.) In Indian cuisine, I guess they pick out like three or four spices and give each dish a distinctive type of taste. In Japanese curry, they apparently throw the whole herb garden in the pot and let the sucker boil. The resulting taste is unidentifiable, but yummy. And, surprisingly, good with beer (for me, it's cola or water only while eating, usually. Beer must be finished before or begin after, thanks; same with wine).
Anyway, dinner accomplished, we walked back down the path that had these cool blue wave-shaped lights arcing over it, out onto Main Street (or what might have been called Main Street if the Japanese named their streets -- actually, this one probably did have a name, but I never knew it), up to the hotel, into bed clothes, and to sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep.
Next: How I was abandoned in Tokyo by my sister and girlfriend, how I bravely and shrewdly found my way back to them (it involved lots of pointing and "Thank yous"), littering the koi pond, Ronald McDonald, and Japanese baseball.
The trip was more tiring than I'd anticipated. I knew it was going to be hot as hell, but he planned tours didn't sound all that strenuous -- half-day bus trips around Tokyo and Kyoto and a bus tour around Mt. Fuji and Lake Ashi -- and we had plenty of free time and nice hotels. Easy, right?
Not so fast.
The night before we left -- the night of Wednesday, Aug. 2 -- I didn't sleep. I lay down for something like ten minutes, but I'd spent all night finishing my packing, ripping CDs to my iPod, sorting out paperwork for my mom to mail while I was gone, and otherwise keeping busy. We got up and went to John Wayne Airport with just one smallish suitcase and a carryon each. Security, blah blah, screwdrivers and Bloody Marys for breakfast, yada yada, all our luggage in the overhead bin (no baggage claim in Tokyo! Woohoo!), and it's off to San Jose and then the connection to Tokyo.
International flights are really boring, but I did get a cute picture of my sacked-out sister. I didn't sleep.
We landed in Tokyo about . . . what, 18 hours after leaving my house. Straight through customs, and a nice lady in a suit was waiting for us with a sign with our names. That's the first time I recall that ever happening to me. It was neat. Equally neat: the exit signs in all the buildings have a little man running through a door, and many of the manhole covers are neatly decorated, with stuff like cherry blossoms or dump trucks. The woman walked us like twenty feet to our bus and when it came we got on. It was around 4 p.m. by then, and we were kind of dragging. The bus was going like 50 miles per hour, too, which shocked me a little -- the weirdest part about highway traffic wasn't the driving on the left, but that everyone seemed more or less to obey speed limits. We passed a few rural towns with lots of vegetation, some highish-rise hotels (The Rainbow Hotel, Andrea said, had a different color for every floor), and Tokyo Disney (I think we saw that famous castle tower from far-off), and gradually the buildings started being replaced by bigger and bigger warehouses and distribution hubs, and then high-rises, and then overpasses and stuff, and we were in Tokyo.
I didn't think much of it at first, but then, we didn't pass through any really interesting areas on the way in. We got off the highway and passed through a bunch of surprisingly non-gigantic streets -- nothing like the seven-lane monstrosities I cross all the time in the I.E. -- lined with 7-Elevens, AM/PMs, coffee houses (Doutor being maybe the most common -- it seems to be the Tokyo Coffee Bean, or maybe Peet's or something) and other normal businesses and buildings. Kind of labyrinthine, not very grid-like, pretty nice and mellow was my first impression driving through at 6:30. We were headed for the Takayama Prince Hotel, right across and a little up the way from Shinagawa Station.
We checked in and a very nice young woman in the uniform beige skirt and white blouse (I think it was) led us to our room. She explained that the button next to the door turned on or off all the lights, that the clipboard was for marking what you drank from the minibar, that the safe was there for us to use, and all kinds of other little details, before bowing and wishing us a nice trip. We were bouncing around like little kids, checking out the cool garden out the window, discovering the cotton kimonos that were in a drawer for us to wear, spreading out in the surprisingly spacious room with three surprisingly normal beds, fretting a little about whether we should've taken our shoes off at the door. (There were, after all, slippers.)
And then the girls discovered the toilet seat.
This thing is a marvel of modern engineering. Want toasty buns? You got it. Dirty butt? Your choice: spray or stream. In for an embarrassingly noisy few minutes? The thing plays a soothing running-water noise, much like on those sound-effects CDs you see in cheesy gift shops and Target. (Well, the one in Kyoto -- or was it Tokyo Hotel No. 2, the Sakura Ryokan? -- did. I think this one was the same model.)
And the flat-screen TV had all the cartoon weirdness, and my sister found Domokun and Doraemon (I think he's called), and we just squealed and rolled around in the coolness for a while.
Eventually, it was time for dinner. We walked outside, down the street ("Where should we go?" "I saw shopping on the way in, on the bus. That was that way."), passed more neat manhole covers and little apartment buildings in small back streets, until we came out on to the main drag and the mall.
On the way, this dude and his kids were passing us, and the kid had an Angels T-shirt on. I'd been up for something like 52 hours at this point, so I just shouted, "Hey, you guys from Orange County?" Turns out that no, but they were from Thousand Oaks, and the guy's cabinetry business is right next to Andrea's mom's workplace. We chatted for a minute, but we were hungry, much like the wolf, so we continued on.
Thus began what became a ritual: "What do you want?" "I don't know, anything sounds good." "How about there?" "I can't read the menu." "Me neither. You think they'll have anything for Rick?" "Oh, damn, that thing is like 3,000 yen." Next! Repeat.
We found the food court. We also found the curry stand. We also found the beverage island, featuring beer, sake and more beer. (And melon soda for Jenny.) The beer lady -- probably no more than 21 -- drew our small beers and gave Jenny and me each a scratcher. Mine was a flop, but Jenny's had a kanji character on it. I held it up with what I hoped was an inquisitive face, and the girl said something and pointed to the sign. Which was written in more kanji. She pointed to my beer, and when I still didn't get the message, she walked off and got our sake (I wanted Jenny to try it). I got bold when she came back and just thrust the thing at her with a big smile, and she went and got me a third beer -- this one a gigantor mug of the same lager.
Curry. Oh my God, Japanese curry. It's not like Indian curry. They serve you a plate half-covered in white rice -- the fluffy kind, compared to sushi rice or some such -- and half-covered in brown liquid with chunks of whatever you ordered in it. (This meant vegetables.) In Indian cuisine, I guess they pick out like three or four spices and give each dish a distinctive type of taste. In Japanese curry, they apparently throw the whole herb garden in the pot and let the sucker boil. The resulting taste is unidentifiable, but yummy. And, surprisingly, good with beer (for me, it's cola or water only while eating, usually. Beer must be finished before or begin after, thanks; same with wine).
Anyway, dinner accomplished, we walked back down the path that had these cool blue wave-shaped lights arcing over it, out onto Main Street (or what might have been called Main Street if the Japanese named their streets -- actually, this one probably did have a name, but I never knew it), up to the hotel, into bed clothes, and to sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep.
Next: How I was abandoned in Tokyo by my sister and girlfriend, how I bravely and shrewdly found my way back to them (it involved lots of pointing and "Thank yous"), littering the koi pond, Ronald McDonald, and Japanese baseball.
