Tokyo – the start of the Japanese exploration (Day 1)

The idea and plans to visit Japan started in Dec 2009 when the tickets were bought, overall plans were made, and hotels were booked. Although, it wasn’t easy to book hotels at all and in some cases it took us a lot of searching and emails till we find a place to sleep – and this was all 4 months before the trip. The group - a friend of mine who is Brazilian and lives in Basel and myself.

Then, the day before the travel arrived and it appeared that we were upgraded to business class which was great considering the 10 hrs flight.

So on Mar 31, we boarded a flight from Zurich to Tokyo and arrived in the exotic land of Japan on April 1. And as you know when you arrive, you have to go to passport control – which was the first moment I realized that there will be a lot of waiting in this country. The line of pass control was loooong, it took us longer than half an hour, no really air, too warm and not pleasant at all. It was funny when we were passing customs when we got a lot of questions ad funnily enough, the guy couldn’t understand how 2 people with different nationalities/passport travel together but hey, we are in Japan.

Next step was to obtain Japanese Rail pass which allows you to travel on all trains (all but the fastest) for free. Which was another line and another 20 min or so (again, no AC what-so-ever). At this moment, we bought also the ticket and the reservation for the train from the airport to the city. The travel pass was an exchange of the voucher and the do all manually – no computers, a lot of paper and manual writing. In addition, a lot of the tickets are only in Japanese, so when the guy gave us the reservations, the only thing that was clear for us were the numbers which he highlighted, but imagine 5 or 6 numbers highlighted – you have to remember what they are – train number, car number, sit number…. Lost in translation and realization that it will be unique experience!

So we headed to the train platform. Train arrived, we boarded and the next cultural difference strike – the smell in the train. I cannot describe it but it was heavy smell, rather like a dirty washroom than something fresh and this was for a trip longer than 1 hour. Unfortunately, it appears that there are smells here that we are not used to and I perceive as heavy and unpleasant.

At arrival, we took a taxi to the hotel and what is written in the books about the taxi drivers and that they get lost as well or don’t know the addresses, we experienced at first hand. The guy was asking all the time where the place is, finally succeeded to call the hotel and took us there.

After leaving the luggage at the hotel, we headed to the port and took a boat. There were so many words said and written about the boat trip and how beautiful it is with the bridges but those are not any special artsy creations and if you are in a two deck boat and you are on the lower level, you don’t see much but if you are tired, you can take a nap every now and then. The funny part was that all stories and explanations and all talking was in Japanese so you can’t get anything at all.

It was interesting that the majority of people who were on the boat were actually Japanese and the foreigners were minority, which was also the case of the Tokyo tower where the local kids push you and don’t say sorry or whatever – I find the population quite rude truth to be told. When you ask about directions and information and if they can reply in English they are polite (and if they don’t speak English, they’ll find you someone to help you often), but otherwise, they can be quite with bad behavior.

Meanwhile we visited the Zojo-ji park and shrine which was pretty! They had tens and even hundreds of statues that were with red hats – quite a nice view when combined with the cherry blossoms.

At the end of this long day (which was like 36hours day), we asked for a restaurant recommendation in the hotel and they suggested a few so we picked up the closest one. Oh, boy! You end up in front of something like a vending machine with pictures of the food, have to put money, get the tickets and the waitress will pick up the ticket and will bring you the food – to discussion, no options no anything. In addition, you don’t know what the food is because all you have is pictures and you may simply guess. Culinary adventure at its best! The people inside were predominantly male and we were at one point the only 2 women.

The first impression is that people don’t really speak English or understand you… The story that you have to ask young people because most of them speak English appeared to be not true. At one moment we stopped a group of 10 young, smartly dressed people to ask for direction and the answer to the question “Do you speak English” was smiles and giggling and a little or no… Then the next step is to involve maps and body language pointing to the map and saying only the name of the place which you are looking for and hoping that they’ll understand you. The next step which is they answer you understand is particularly charming because they quite often talk you in Japanese, even with 1 or 2 words and point you the direction. Such a unique experience that you can’t help but smile and laugh. A few of the cases were really remarkable – they answer you in Japanese and you just guess where they point to. In some cases the people were helpful and were even speaking English but this was not the practice. Don’t even want to think what it would be in the other cities – crash Japanese course and In-flight Japan MP3s should become my life.