I figure I’ll get a post in about my first day in Japan before I completely forget what happened. My memory isn’t completely clear right now so I’ll use my imagination to add details.
Day 1: April 30, 2008
Ahh. Back to the airport early in the morning. I made it to the terminal about an hour before boarding so I had a chance to walk around a bit. My gate was right next to an electronics shop (awesome!) with a big Gundam in front of it (awesomer!). Between gates, there were photo galleries of places all around Taiwan so I checked out those as well. The galleries were set up to look like jungles and beaches, which was cool. What would have been cooler would be if I had taken pictures instead of describing it in a sentence.
On the plane, I played pachinko on the in-flight entertainment thing. There was really no point to it. Just a bunch of balls flying through holes. Most of the balls didn’t go through holes. Numbers changed. Noises were made. I don’t get it. I also played Bejeweled. Unfortunately, this was right before we began our descent so I didn’t get to see how awesome the game was.
After landing in Japan I made it through immigration without trouble and made my way to the train ticket counter. The person at the counter spoke enough English and I gestured wildly enough for me to not only get a train ticket in to Tokyo, but also a 2-day Tokyo Metro subway pass. Cool. I followed the signs down to the train tracks and got onto the train that was waiting there, hoping it was the right train.
It was. There was only one JR line there and it only goes in one direction. I couldn’t go wrong. But I could have tried harder. The train ride took almost 1.5 hours. At one station, I needed to transfer from the rapid line to the local line because the rapid line didn’t go to my final station. So I got off of the train and, to my horror, there were no English signs anywhere. Anywhere. Except for the big sign that said to go downstairs for the local line. That was in English. The rest of the trip finished without incident. I got out the wrong exit from the station so I took the scenic route to the hotel. On the way, I passed a takoyaki store, which was important because after more wild gestures, I had takoyaki for dinner.
Feeling adventurous, I took my first subway ride down to the Imperial Palace. I’d gone there before but this time I got to walk around more. I was taking some pictures by the water fountains and an Indian couple asked me to take their picture. And then the dude asked me if I wanted a picture. He did this all in Japanese. But I just looked at him like I was stupid (I was) and tried to converse in English. That did the trick. I walked around looking for more parks and more things to take pictures of but it was getting dark. One map I had said there was a a Godzilla statue somewhere nearby, but I couldn’t find it. Disappointed, I returned to my hotel.
I’ll have to post a picture of my hotel room later. It’s very small, but it has everything one would need in a hotel room. And as a plus, it’s right across the street from Tokyo Dome, home of the Yomiuri Giants (whose logo looks surprisingly similar to the SF Giants logo). I watched them play the Hiroshma Toyo Carp (whose logo looks surprisingly similar to the Cincinnati Reds logo) that night on TV from my hotel room, across the street.
And that was my first half of a day in Japan.