I don't speak f@%king Japanese!!
Trip Start
May 26, 2004
1
12
20
Trip End
Ongoing
Tokyo,
Japan
Sunday, June 27, 2004
The next day we went to have a look at the city centre. It was a bit crazy to say the least. They have loads of these Pachinko parlours which is some crazy kind of vertical pinball. Some of the outfits and haircuts you see going around were like something out of some bad science fiction movie
01-Japanese Traditional Guest House
. We got a bit of culture shock when we caught a taxi. The back door opened and closed by its self and the driver had a proper uniform and wore white gloves!! Saying that like taxi drivers all over the world he didn't really know where he was going. I guess it was a language barrier as well as the fact that he was just a bit useless. We got where we wanted to go eventually and every where we looked were little Japanese people with face masks. There was a fair bit of pollution about but the city and the skyline were something else. We went into the Sony headquarters and some of the gadgets we saw in there were amazing. Well I thought so anyway!! Upstairs they had a load of PS2's and there were wall to wall Japanese kids playing away. They are mad into their toys over here. I didn't want to be here at closing time when they had to throw all the heads out. There would be blood shed for sure. We went into an internet café to try and catch up with people and it was the weirdest place I have ever seen. There were basically wall to wall cubicles with doors. You could rent videos, DVD's and games as well as surf the net. Of course all of them were in Japanese so you had no idea what kind of stuff was being watched but I would not like to be a part of the cleanup crew in there. Saying that though by the look of some of the heads in there I doubt it ever closes to be cleaned!!We managed to find a place with pics in the window so we were able to get some proper food
02-Gone Native
. It was a nice little place with two old people that ran it. We ordered what we thought was chicken but what could have been pork curry. Fi not being much of a carnivore wanted to be sure but before she started miming "Old McDonald's Farm" I told her just to be happy it wasn't noodles or a Bigu Maku!! We wandered around town until it was dark and all the neon came on. It was like being in Blade Runner. We went for a beer and found a small place nearby. When we went up and tried to get a beer the woman was very adamant that we could have a beer but we couldn't get anything to eat. We were a bit confused but as we didn't want food it was no real problem. We met the first and for all we know only English speaking person in Japan. We started chatting and as we were talking we noticed that as other people came in they were being served food!! It seemed that they had food but we weren't aloud have any!! Anyway we were talking to the woman and Fi was teaching her a bit of Irish after she found out where we were from apparently she asked any one who came in some words to learn. Once we got a couple of conas ata tu's out of her some food "magically" appeared on our table. When I say food it was a small tray with half a tomato, some tofu and a bit of mustard. I didn't touch mine and Fi had a bit of hers. We finished our beer and went to leave and the bastards charged us for the "food". Almost 5 euro each. We complained but had no choice to pay for it. We were not happy and your woman learned some new words before we left!
03-Row row row your boat
! Apart from that it was a good day and we headed off to the hostel for some sleep.The next day Fi decided that we should go to Disney Land so I was more than happy to accommodate her!! We caught the little shuttle train to the place. We only had a half a day as we were due to fly to Brisbane the same day so we had to make the most of it. When we got in it was kind of weird. It was like a little piece of America in Tokyo and while some of the guys around dressed up where Japanese they were mostly white. I don't suppose a Japanese Snow white would look right. So we had fun doing the tourist thing and as it was my first visit to Disney Land I had a blast. We went on all of the usual suspects; Thunder Mountain, haunted mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean (arrrrrrrrrrr) and a good few others. It was like being a kid again and we loved it!! But our time was growing short and after the obligatory photos we headed back to the hostel to prepare fro our flight down under. While in the hostel I got pretty attached to my kimono type dressing gown and so in the bag it went. We said good bye to Japan and headed for the airport.
Now usually at the airport all we had to worry about up until now was the excess baggage. However as it the way we had another couple of issues to deal with before we were allowed leave. Firstly we had two 3 foot long swords in our possession. We were given the relevant forms to fill out at customs but first they wanted to check them out before we checked them in, and check them out they certainly did. There were 3 security guards, one police man and a guy from the army. They unwrapped the swords from the packaging and all had a feel to ensure that they were blunt and safe and not an explosive device I guess
04-Putting in the hard work
! So that slowed us down a bit.Secondly we had a lot of excess baggage at this stage and it was ridiculous. Fair play to the girl behind the counter as she gave us extra for free but the we had to dig out stuff from our bag, namely our Thai hand made suits, to carry them in over our arm and we had to pack our carry on bags to the gills.
Thirdly once this was done she checked the password and saw that there was something wrong with my visa. The numbers on the visa and the number on my passport didn't match so I was asked to wait outside the barrier while they sorted it out. Like an idiot I hadn't checked the visa properly and one digit was out. I think it was an o and it should have been a d or something like that (damn my bad handwriting!!). We eventually got it sorted and I was allowed to check in.
Finally one of the trollie dollies tried to stop us on the way through cos our hand luggage was the size of a small car but there was no way Fi was having any of that. I just stood back glad she was annoyed at someone other than me after the passport/visa incident but the girl behind the counter just waved us through and finally after undergoing more stress than a Muslim with tourettes flying to the US we were on our way to OZ.
Japanese beer was some of the best we had tasted never mind the most accessible
05-First view of Disney Land
. Vending machines on the street, genius idea. I don't know how they weren't vandalised and I never once saw anyone underage buying beer from them, and I was around them a lot. Cultural differences I suppose. Kirin and Asahi were the ones we drank the most often and there was also Sapporo. These are all available in Ireland. They are all top quality beer and very strong each one maybe 7 or 8%. It was actually cheaper for beer, McDonalds, public transport and most food items in Japan than it was in Ireland. The accommodation was quite expensive for what you got but everything else was quite reasonable. All in all a really good place to visit but the film Lost in Translation is very, very accurate. Some times people would be talking to you and you would have no idea what they were saying and would say so and give off plenty of "what the fuck are you saying" body language and they just kept talking at you. It really is like another world and like nowhere you have ever been. Cool though and they do have swords!! 
