The Japan Adventure.. Part 1
Thursday, 5th March. – Getting There!
After finally getting to sleep around 1am, I was awoken by my alarm at the ungodly hour of 4am. I showered, got dressed in some comfy clothes, packed some last minute things and left home by 5am.
Henry dropped me off in front of the Jetstar terminal, so I checked in my luggage and headed to the gate lounge to wait. Just as I sat down, there was a P.A. Announcement: Gate change. No sooner did I stand up, and there were another two announcements/changes! I wish they’d make up their minds, seriously. 6am is too early to be mucking people around!
Sitting in the final gate lounge before we boarded, I saw 5 people with ‘Tokyo’ Lonely Planet books in hand. I hid mine in my bag…
There were a couple of feral people in the lounge too. Oversize pants falling down, hat on diagonally, with a Vicky Pollard in tow. Precisely the reason you sometimes wish travel wasn’t so affordable.
Then at 6.30 it was time to board. I found my seat, then waited for everyone else to board. An Asian woman sat in the seat in front of me, and I couldn’t help noticing she had strange nonsensical writing on her sweater… Woo! first Engrish of the trip! But I couldn’t get a pic.
I also saw one cute guy on board, with a girl. Sister or gf? Hmm.
Once everyone was strapped in, the doors were sealed and we taxied to the runway. Takeoff was fairly smooth, nothing interesting there. Safety demonstration… Zzzzz.
Once in the air, I napped a bit, with my iPod playing. About 2 hrs later we landed at the Gold Coast, where I picked up my luggage ready for the next leg.
I checked my watch: 3 hrs until the Tokyo flight. I spotted a power point near a cafe seat, so set up my laptop to waste some time surfing the net. The coffee I ordered was foul (they burnt the milk, badly), and I could feel it making its presence known.
I ‘netted for about an hour, then decided it was time to check in again. (Plus, the coffee wanted out already.) Half an hour standing in the check-in queue, then had to go through security again. I got picked out for a pat-down.. does that mean i’m looking fat, or maybe they thought I was packing something? 
(hur hur hur)
The post-security waiting room was SMALL. Worse than Darwin (and I thought that was pretty poor) but at least the loos were clean. But there was no food places to buy anything. When it was time to board, we had to walk out along the tarmac to get to the plane.
After a bit of a wait, we boarded. I got a window seat, just forward of the wing. A Japanese girl from Nagoya sat next to me. Her English was as bad as my Japanese was/is. Actually, not quite.
9 1/2 hr flight. Oh. my. god. Day flights are torture, I couldn’t really sleep even though I only had 3 hrs the night before. Even though I WANTED to, and TRIED to. Really need drugs next time.
One movie and one episode of Dexter later, my laptop battery died. I swapped to the small battery, and watched one more episode – sans the last 5 minutes.. the battery died too quickly.
Then I listened to my ipod, played dope wars for awhile, dozed, read the Jetstar magazine 5 times.. stared at the seat tray in front of me. I think somewhere along the line I did fall asleep for a while, probably out of sheer boredom.
Day turned to night, and we finally started our descent into Tokyo. On the way down I saw some city lights that were pretty, but the plane was banking so didn’t see as much as people on the other side. Plus, it wasn’t really Tokyo lights – Narita isn’t really that near Tokyo.
First surprise… travellators – for the lazy people. I for one, was glad to be able to use my legs again after that monstrous flight. Second surprise, a mini monorail thingy which took us to the main terminal.
As we all went through customs, any aliens (non-Japanese citizens) were digitally fingerprinted and photographed. That didn’t really bother me, though i’m sure some people would kick up a fuss about invasion of privacy and all that shit.
Surprise number 3: Our luggage was already waiting at the carousel by the time we got there! How efficient!
After picking up my bag, I wandered upstairs and collected my rental phone from the post office Rentafone had sent it to.
Then I headed downstairs again and sorted out my JR Train Pass (for use when I head across to Mt Fuji, Kyoto, Nagoya and back) and also a Suica+NEX discount ticket for the journey into Tokyo.
I booked myself on the 8.45pm NEX Express and made my way down to the platform. En route, I met 3 guys from the Gold Coast (Two Caucasians and one Singapore-born, Aussie-bred Asian guy. Kinda cute.. lol) who looked equally as lost as I did, so we teamed up. (The blind leading the blind!)
At 8.43pm a train pulled up on our platform. I knew the Japanese were known for their timely train system, so we all assumed it was the right one. We got on, then started looking for our allocated seat numbers. The train left.
As we pulled into the next station, some cleaners got onboard. I asked one, “Sumimasen!?” (Excuse me) and showed him my ticket. He pointed across to the next platform where a red train with NEX painted on the side was waiting! “Arigato!” (Thank you) I said, and took off. Then I paused, ran down the platform to the carriage where the other guys were, but by the time they hopped off too, the NEX was just leaving. Damn.
We all waited on the platform for the next hour, chatting. 9.45pm came, and so did the train – right on the dot. Lesson learnt. We boarded for the 90 minute journey to into the heart of Tokyo.
When the ticket inspector came through to check our tickets, he charged us an extra 510 Yen for being on the wrong train. Baka! (Idiot)… Howabout some signage in English next time, or at least tell us what kind of train to expect!
The other guys were staying at Ueno, so they hopped off at Tokyo station. I continued onto Shinjuku. In hindsight this was sort of a bad idea, as I found out Shinjuku is a HUGE station. Once I disembarked, I spent the next 45 minutes wandering around in circles, looking for the East Exit. There’s no better initiation than to jump in headfirst, I guess…
I finally found the east exit, then the “How to find us” directions – including pictures – I printed from my hotel’s website kicked in.
Once I checked in and offloaded my luggage in the room, I looked at the clock – it was midnight.. Tokyo time. I’d been awake for 22 hours, with only a fun size Mars bar, two muesli bars and a ‘cleansing’ coffee to sustain me. I needed sleep. But I also needed food. But top priority, I needed a shower. Yieee. So with that over with, I went out in search of food.
There were lots of neon signs, all in Japanese, so I had no idea what they were saying. Hesitating to enter somewhere without any English signage, I saw the familiar glow of a KFC sign halfway up the street. I went in, and ordered something. It wasn’t too hard, I just pointed to a picture on the menu – although it was different to what they serve here – and said “Hai” (Yes).
I was given a number, so I sat at a nearby table and waited. When my food arrived a minute later (is that what they call waiting?) I was quite disappointed.
Ok so KFC is never going be a feast (Nah, the McFeast is at Maccas.. hur hur). I wasn’t expecting that, but… Ok: Firstly, there was no chicken salt on the chips. People only buy KFC chips because of the salt! Next, the burger made a Maccas cheeseburger look big. Yep, it was that small. Oh well, I was too tired to care. Regardless of whether it tasted good or bad, my brain didn’t register. It was food, and it went down. End of story.
Afterward, I wandered around a bit and took a couple of street photos while letting my dinner settle. I discovered Kabukicho, only realising where I was when all the Oji-san (Old men) started approaching me, showing me pictures of the girls their particular establishment had on offer. Iiiie! (No!). I quickly headed back to the main road before the Yakuza got me, then made my way down toward Ni-Chome / 2Chome (the gay area).
Being Thursday night, there seemed to be nothing going on. Things were open, but hardly any people around. I had a quick look in a porn shop, which had almost every type of porn you can think of. Bears, bondage, twinks, groups, Caucasian, Asian.. and then I saw some I had to look twice at – I couldn’t believe what I was seeing… the boys on the cover looked 10 yr old! And they were! (Or near enough). And there was a whole bunch of titles, displayed at eye height on the shelf. That’s just too wrong.
Then I walked back to my room at the hotel and fell asleep – probably the second my head touched the pillow.
06.Mar.09 
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