Travel Journey – Sunday 13/4 – 08

Okies, this day have been both good and bad.

Let’s start where I got off the plane at Narita Airport. When we finally got off the plane I first couldn’t realize that I actually was in Japan, after all this time. When I finally realized this I tried to inhale everything. The airport seemed big at first due to the wide hallways and corridors. One thing I quickly noticed while walking to the customs was that the Japanese are very fond of sounds. In the corridors there are some plink plonking melodies playing loudly in the background. Not irritating, just like a soundtrack of life or something. But that was only the beginning.

The next thing I noticed is that they seem to love trains. They have train that goes everywhere and three different train-lines, if you don’t count the Shinkansen¹. But in the airport they had trains to take you to the different terminals, instead of busses like they had in Finland and several other places. I later heard that Japan have the worlds most complex train system. With a subway train and two above ground trains. One called the JR train and the other called Keihin/Keishin or something (don’t remember at the writing moment).

Before I’ve got out of the airport I’ve noticed that the Japanese are very nice people. The Japanese customs man that checked my bags made jokes, with only a few words and doing gestures that really showed that he was careful not to disturb the order of my luggage. Even more they were patient and tried the best to both understand and help me get right tickets and directed me to the right lines and platforms. Even thou we didn’t understand each other all that well I managed to get along with most of the people.

That it took about 2 hours to get to the apartment I was staying at is completely an other thing… You see, the confusing thing with the signs for the trains is that two lines often with the same number share the same sign. The difference on the other hand is the direction of the trains. You go to one sign and you then automatically start reading the sign following the circle upwards… big mistake. You shall always go downwards; otherwise you’ll get on a train that’s heading in the completely opposite direction. Which I did, but when I realized what had happened I got of the train and managed to get to the right train.

When I finally arrived at Miiko’s place I was so tired that I just lay in bed watching a couple of movies and some series I brought along on Linsuss from 13:00 to 22:00 when the two people I share the room with came back. Actually just one arrived first, Lucien, and we had some soup and talked a little. While we were eating the other one, Oliver, came into the room. Lucien is from England and Oliver is from France. After a little bit of talking Lucien said that he was going to an internet café to check some mail and both Lucien and I agreed to follow. I mostly came with them because I thought that Miiko would have a working wireless LAN at the apartment, which she hasn’t, and Lucien because he wanted to check his profile (on a website for CouchSurfing).

Well, at that time I chatted with a few back home which was annoying in some ways. The most annoying thing were that many asked the same questions, which I already had posted the answers to on the blog. That was a little bit annoying indeed. One other thing were that it wasn’t the easiest keybord to type on. To begin with it was in QWERTY, which everyone who knows me knows that I despise, and to continue with it had the Japanese layout, wich makes it a little bit hard to write with Romaji². Anyway, in my frustration, I took up my laptop and found to my surprise that it was a free wireless internet nearby so I logged in with Linsuss instead, which were much better.

Well, enough about that let’s talk a little about the apartment I’m staying at. To begin with it’s a little bit noisy, with the railway only about twenty meters from the house. And as I mentioned before, the Japanese use trains more than they use busses and taxis so there is at least one train per minute, often two, one from each direction. And when they stop a melody of some sort plays so all who is on the train and those who are getting on the train knows how much time they have to get on/off the train. Otherwise it’s very nice. Many, many blankets, but quite a thin madrass comparing to the one I’m used to sleep on, but it’s more than enough. The kitchen wasn’t the best kitchen I’ve ever seen, in fact it was quite useless. It’s small, and don’t have much space to cook anything, but that’s ok too ‘cause food here… it’s almost at cheep to eat out as to cook.

In Sweden, when I eat outside it costs about 60 SEK for only one meal and I seldom get satisfied either. Here, I pay 400 YEN, about 26 SEK, and get a portion that often is a little bigger than what you get usually at a restaurant when you eat and often I get satisfied too! A drink, if you don’t want ice tea or water which is free and always served, cost from about 110 YEN (about 8-9 SEK) to about 250 yen (16 SEK). Back home you don’t even get a soft drink for 16 SEK at a restaurant. You can’t get it too much cheaper at the super market either.

Well, other than that I decided to go to an Onsen with Lucien tomorrow too. A Onsen is a hot spring bath. Where they don’t heat the water at all, just takes up the water from the ground, and due to volcanic activity in the ground they manage to keep it very warm. Well, don’t know much more about it but I’ll try to write more about it tomorrow when I’ll return.

Best regards,
Herid Fel

1. Who is a “Bullet-Train” that goes pretty fast, it’s often used to go to other cities ↩

2. ABC; and such characters ↩