I started off at 3 am leaving for the airport... see this smile? It's fake. I hadn't slept but an hour... and twas time to leave the comfort of my own home into the mix of excitement and anxiety that was ahead. Anyways, airport journey isn't that interesting. I slept in the car... and had a mess of a time at Hartsfield. Apparently no one even shows up to check your bags until 5 ish... for my flight at six. To add to that the train was down so I had to walk the mile to my terminal. All's well though.
I ate burger king (yelch, it was the only thing open) for breakfast and slept all the way to Newark. The cabin pressure screws with your ears when you're not awake... I woke up deaf... well deafer than usual. Found a chair in Newark and slept during my 2 hour layover. Packed some better food for the 13 hour flight (philly cheesesteak!) and off I went.
I look happy, right? The plane hadn't taken off yet. 13 hour flights generally aren't that bad. I slept through a lot of mine. My laptop died within two hours and I didn't want to pay 125 USD for the adapter the charge it on the plane. The movies being shown were horrible and Anna Karenina became boring pretty quickly. The airplane food however was pretty good. Nom Nom
Welcome to Japan! And I felt that way... happy to have arrived. This would change with time.
One thing I had to get used to was doing everything on the left side. Generally when walking toward someone, both people veer right to avoid hitting. In Japan, it's left. Still getting used to that. I bought a ticket to Shinjuku from the counter (my preliminary Japanese training was paying off). I rode the Narita Express to Shinjuku... this "train" however was more like a airplane on wheels... unlike the crazy packed trains in Tokyo. Also I had no idea how to read my ticket. Took me a while to figure out I had to sit on a specific seat on a specific section because the train sections separated halfway through the trip.
At this point, the number of pictures I took dwindled... paralleling my decreased energy levels and increased desire to add to Japan's increasing suicide statistic. On the Narita Express, believe it or not, I ran into someone from Emory! It was a fleeting encounter but this '06 graduate had been living in Japan for a year and was leaving within the week. Perhaps I arrived just to fill the Emory quota for Japan. I also sat next to a (rather smelly) gentleman who lived in Japan but was obviously from America. He, unlike me, was fluent in Japanese so he answered many of my concerns. I was confident.... for about 5 seconds.
When I arrive at Shinjuku station, everything seems calm. As I got closer to the heart of the station, EVERYTHING picked up. People rushed back and forth. It was like a game of frogger in every direction. Or like those VISA commercials when everyone is moving in unison until the one guy with cash... or in my case two huge things of luggage and no knowledge of where to go or what to do... breaks everything down. Funnily enough, this was the top post on one of the newsfeeds I read.
http://www.tokyometro.jp/rosen/eki/shibuya/map_rittai_1.html
And seriously, that was only a SECTION of the station.
So whoever designed these stations wasn't bright. I had tons of luggage and there were escalators... but only ones going down. Sure helps the kid needing to go up. I was pouring sweat and tired from lack of sleep slash jet lag. Finally I made it to the housing office to pick up my keys and fill out all the lease agreements (took about an hour) just to have to go back.
Back at Shinjuku, I had to take the Yamanote Line to Shibuya... then switch to the Denen Toshi line to go to Kamagaza or something like that. It seems simple... until you realize there are like 50 different train lines with a different price for every stop and buying tickets is NOT simple. You pretty much tell them a price you want to put on the ticket and fix it later if you're wrong. Luckily enough I guessed right both times. It makes you appreciate the simplicity of Marta.
http://www.tokyotechsupport.com/map/rosen_eng2.png
That's a map of the MAIN ones. Only the main ones. One of the ones I rode isn't even on that map... the smaller private train lines don't get included.
After arriving at the last stop. I still had a mile to walk to attempt to find this place. At this point I really wanted to give up and sleep there. I was contemplating giving up existence. No joke. I pulled to the side and just called a taxi. I gave him the address and let him figure it out. He had to stop and ask for directions a couple times but by chance we found it.
First thing I did? Took a shower. Though I didn't figure out how to turn on the hot water... but at that point I didn't care anyways. After 17 hours of plane and the Tokyo metro, it felt great.
My roommate Shaun is from Korea... but he's moving out next week. He's into a lot of musical/video things so we had a bit to talk about. After unpacking, my room looked like this.
The doors aren't that tall. Literally maybe a couple inches taller than me. I feel sorry for non-short people. After all is said and done, I went downstairs and met a couple other people, Baboe from Korea and Jeff from Utah and hit the sack. At 8 pm.
Arrival in Japan? Check.
Tim Soo
1 comment:
Tim, great post and thanks for checking in!
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