Welcome to Japan! Please take off your shoes!
Trip Start
Oct 17, 2007
1
7
Trip End
Nov 17, 2007
Tokushima,
Japan
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Quite the trip to get here. Nasty taxi snafu trying to leave the hotel, we asked for a big cab for 2 bikes, and all our stuff ,and they send the tiny little hatch-backs with a roof rack. Not gonna work. Find out too late that there's a departure tax - in Rupies and I just used up all my Rupies. Finally get a pickup truck to the airport, all our stuff in back gets drenched. Life doesn't improve at this point; we make it through security check #1 (this is just to get through the airport door), still in time (just) to catch the plane, and get stonewalled by the checkin agents who insist that Kathmandu never has, and will not, accept an e-ticket, despite the fact that their airline cheerfully issued us one 9 months ago. We have quite the row - they want us to BUY more tickets, we go up the manager chain, and eventually get put on another, later flight, but at least we're on. Kathmandu airport is one big room with chairs, no amenities, and a dull couple hours, but flight goes off only 1/2 hour late. Arriving in Delhi, we have just the quintessential Indian experience; we disembark way out on the ramp, and get on a bus. Bus fills up, driver slams the doors, and roars off just in time to completely cut off the only other vehicle on the entire ramp - a baggage tractor, and slam into a few good pot holes in the process. Driver then proceeds to get lost, wander around the large, mostly empty ramp area long enough that he can stomp on the gas and cut off the same baggage tractor again before arriving at our stop. But now he realizes the doors are on the wrong side of the bus - i.e.
Bikes "wrapped" for JR travel
not facing the building. With acres and acres of empty concrete at his disposal, he swings a turn too close to a set of carts, has to stop, back up, and finish the turn with a few back and fill maneuvers. Priceless. Delhi airport is only slightly better than Kathmandu, there's a few snack shops while you wait, and wait we did, our flight being at 01:20. Once checked in, the security line was a full hour. This would have been marginally OK if we felt like security actually accomplished anything at the end of an hour, but it's just a cursory check, and on you go. Asiana Air is very nice (note to ATG people: the massive A330-300 has only a single main flap element. Tell that to IAI!), and then a stop-over in the Seoul airport. After Delhi, this was increadible. It was a lot like Chicago without the crowds. Big, shiny, new, friendly, quiet and efficient. The drinking fountains have signs saying "drinking water, filtered and purified", whereas the Delhi airport had "Drinking Water" and a rusty sink with a grubby faucett, take your chances. And finally to Osaka, which is even shinier, spiffier, and no signs on the drinking fountains because everyone knows that the water is safe to drink.
And then the smoothness ended. Osaka Kansai airport is on an island. Bikes aren't allowed on the road to the mainland, and it's getting late anyway. Bikes aren't allowed on the airport shuttle buses. The nice lady at information made us a hotel reservation in Wakayama, from which we'd catch the ferry to Tokushima on Shikoku island the next day, and sold us train tickets.
School kids in uniform
We don't think bikes are allowed on the trains either, but it's worth a try. We re-assemble bikes, take the elevator up, enter the train station, cram into a slightly-too-small elevator down to the platform, and get on the train. That was easy. Then the people in uniforms arrive. We play dumb, they don't speak much english, but eventually they haul us off the train, and up to the superintendant's office. We take the tactic of saying "we have a ticket, and there's no other way off this island". They keep telling us it's against regulations, the bike must be "made small" and wrapped in a bag or tarp. We explain that our bikes don't get small - and this is true, with front and back racks, not much changes even if you pull the wheels off and fold things up like the Japanese are used to doing. After going back and forth for a while, they give up, throw tarps OVER our fully loaded bikes, and put us back on the train. excellent. Once on, no one bothers us. The Japanese are very rule abiding people. The rule says the bike must be wrapped, so the bike was wrapped, rule checked off, good enough. As we leave the final station 45 minutes later in Wakayama, the nice guy tells us that we aren't allowed to do what we just did. (I think, it was all in Japanese). Found our hotel, nice clean place, and took in the full culture shock of Japan:* So QUIET!!!! No horns. The occasional crosswalk, that's all
* So CLEAN! No trash anywhere
* First restaurant: remove shoes, shoe locker at the door. In fact, Japan is so clean, they just have you check your shoes in the shoe locker of the arrival airport, you won't need them again until going back to your own grubby country.
Tukoshima, our first Japanese City
Just kidding. * Can drink the water!
* Public toilets! And they're clean! And Free! And have Toilet Paper!! (I think Nepal had one public toilet, tops, and you'd have to pay, and bring you're own TP)
* Toilets are the only thing free though; the rest of Japan is very expensive. Cheapest hotel possible is around $54/night. Meals in a real restaurant are at least $10/person, although the noodle shops are cheaper. The 2 hour ferry ride was $50 for us and bikes.
* No English! And outside the cities, no Romanji! Can't find a map with Romanji names, so we're doing everything by geographical and character recognition. Yikes! And ordering food is a real challenge as vegetarians - there's fish in everything! We have a sign now telling waiters that we're picky western vegetarian tourists, AND allergic to fish, thank you.
* Standard Japanese breakfast: rice (of course), miso soup (fine), raw fish (oy), and a raw egg. really. We got them to cook the egg.
* Stop lights! And people obey them!
* Side Walks!!!! (The streets of Thamel were choked always with people, rickshaws, mopeds, cars etc. now we just have to dodge other bikers)
* Big buildings! (Nothing in Nepal was more than 3 or 4 stories)
* There's lots of elderly people out and about; something rarely seen in Nepal.
* No belching black exhaust clouds! Our lungs can start to heal after the last 3 months!!
That's all I've got time for, we're off around this island and others, hopefully it stops raining soon! (pouring this morning, else you wouldn't have gotten this)
MK
