hmm, i suppose a bit of background would be appropriate.
last year, my old college friends and i decide to take a trip together to Asia (yes, vague i know). my areas of interest were thailand and japan, because i semi-spoke both with a broken degree of sufficiency. or deficiency. or what have you. in any case, the trip was scheduled for the last three weeks of december. it was october. i had already purchased the tickets which were about $1200.
how i managed to scrounge up the cash for the tickets was a different matter unto itself. i had been working two low-paying part time jobs ever since i had graduated (... eh, actually i hadn't technically graduated yet at that point, but i had already stopped taking classes for about 7 months... anywhoo!).
then it happened. i landed a "real" job, even after only half-heartedly applying. it was a mixed blessing: it was a startup, and the salary wasn't great for my field, althought it was nearly a $20K/year increase from my then current set of part time jobs. so i took it, and then realized: no starting vacation days. lovely!
so i cancelled by tickets. one uneventful year passes. my vacation and savings were in place. this time it was time to go!
Pre-Planning (or panicking. or whatever you want to call it)
because of my obsession with smooth happenings and well thought planning, it seemed that a fair bit of preparation was due. although, as with all my endeavors, it didn't quite turn out that way. i got my passport 4 days before i was due to leave, and the rest of time was spent tying down loose ends and obligations which, although i was only half-heartedly committed to, i was committed nonetheless.
errr... sorta at least. i call them committments in the sense that i feel bad for not doing them, even though not fulfilling them wouldn't do any harm. maybe they should be called "guilty agreements?" it's hard to say no, especially to a friend (or for a friend's sake). that is an entire different blog post altogether....
i left work early on friday (i.e. around 3:30pm), ran back with the full-on intention (ha! there's that word again) of packing my things and researching what fun was to be had across the pacific ocean.
but the night turned out to not be as free as i thought. ended up meeting with janie in san francisco to have korean food - and then more time spent going from place to place and eventually happening upon my overnight destination at a adrienne's place in sunnyvale (the airport i was leaving from was in san jose). when i got the opportunity to sit down at a computer again, i booked my hotel reservations for Nagoya, and did a half hour search for things to do.
then it was time for bed, close to 1 am. it might have been hard to sleep, had i not been utterly wasted (not in the sense that one usually thinks). i woke up again around 5am, and just kinda lied in bed while my friends were sleeping. a quick breakfast later, then it was off to the airport.
心待ちにしていた!
Day 1
this was the second time i had been to an airport. the last time wasn't that bad, although i was only travelling domestically. i check in my bags, and then it's off to the security check, where i eventually got fondled and violated. apparently there was this informal "3 strikes" thing going on with the metal detector - i managed to walk through the gate three times, and i set off the alarm three times. so i got pulled out by some security guard, who proceeded to investigate my terrorist effects. good thing i didn't have any bottled water on me. but apparently, i had notable amounts of metal running through the zippers on my pants. who woulda thunk!
checking in took a shorter amount of time than i thought - it was nearly an hour before boarding time. nonetheless it was crowded, and became increasingly so as the time came near. a second (!) security check occurred where "they" checked all our carry bags (again).
eh... what is there to say about a plane ride? economy class. cramped. right behind first and business class. food that bordered on the edge of what one would call "edible." there was a two-hour stop over in los angeles, at which time i transferred to my plane bound for narita. there were already millions of japanese people all over the waiting area. i sat down, tried to read, but ended up merely contemplating the situation as i waited in anticipation.
but what was there really to contemplate? i'm taking a 10 hour flight, 5500 miles to a place i've never been before. i'd been telling myself that i'd be going "some day," and that day had finally arrived. too bad i had no one to comfortably practice my japanese with.
bags were searched again before boarding...
i remember getting off the plane. good grief, it was frickin' hot. and humid. and i was still inside the airport. ack! i exited the terminal after going through customs, and was suddenly surrounded by millions of japanese people. one thing jumped out at me immediately, being one of the few non-japanese here and all: foreigners stick out like sore thumbs in the crowd.
so, i was supposed to meet sean at the airport. i decided to stand around and wait outside the terminal (right next to the one other foreigner, no less). it was interesting to note that the subway entrance was literally 20 feet from the arrival terminal. how convenient! i met sean, and we took off for tokyo to meet his japanese friend (i think his "american" name was john, or something). we were kinda rushed because of hotel reservations in Osaka (which was a 3 hours train ride away).
en route to tokyo's shinjuku area (that's where we were meeting john), i encounter the twisting maze of the the tokyo subway station for the very first time. packed like sardines. at any given moment, one is completed surrounded by 20 other people who are going exactly the opposite (or slightly opposing) direction as you.
anyway, we miraculously find him, have a dinner at an unremarkable restaurant (err, i think it was german food or something?), and then rush off on the shinkansen towards osaka. the shinkansen stopped at shin-osaka station in the northern portion of osaka - then it was off the osaka station, which was near where i reserved my hotel. after exiting osaka-eki, i got lost finding the hotel - even though i later found out that it was a 5 minute walk from the south-east entrance. by the time i arrived at the hotel (near 1am japan time - what is that, like 7 or 8am in california?), i had still managed to not utter a single word of japanese. wee!
the hotel room was tiny; tiny by american standards of course. the toilet seat had funny electronic controls on it, and the bath tub was deeper than usual. we (definitely) ain't in kansas anymore!
