Japan! What a feast for the senses to the world-weary traveller. A place that I’ve always dreamed of visiting and somehow never quite made it. A Western standard of living and yet weird and foreign through root and branch. I was instantly mesmerised by the bright lights and strangeness of it all and yet intimidated by the fact that speaking the lingua franca doesn’t really help much in the Land of the Rising Sun where everything is written in Kanji and few people speak English. Fortunately a lot of the tourist information and subway signs are written in English – it was actually easier than it could have been.
The luggage took a long time to appear on the belt; although considering how long it took to walk from the aeroplane to the baggage hall this was probably not that surprising. Finally, I collected my stuff and headed to customs. “How long are you staying in Japan for?” he asked. “About a week and a half” (Not long enough by far but from here on in I was on a tight schedule). “And will you be staying here the whole time?” he said, pointing at “Tokyo Backpackers” on my immigration form. “Probably not the whole time. I plan to travel around a bit but I’m not sure where yet.” My vague answer or perhaps my unkempt (I think of it as backpacker chic) appearance triggered some suspicions on his part and so he started searching my bags. Eventually after feeling around through my dirty clothes for a while he seemed satisfied enough and let me carry on. I’m just glad he didn’t discover my zip-lock plastic bag of Malarone malaria tablets – most of which have spilled out of the blister-pack; they looked suspiciously like the meta-amphetamine pills in the anti-drugs poster at the airport.
It was quite easy getting into town from Narita airport. The staff at the counter for the Keisei line spoke good English so I soon had a ticket to Ueno for 1000¥ (12$US). It wasn’t the quickest way into town – it took 80 minutes – but I was in no immediate rush and it was the cheapest. I was amazed on the train at how many people I saw playing on their PSP’s. I’ve never seen so many in one train carriage before. At Ueno I got the Tokyo Metro’s Hibaya line for two stops to Minowa station. Even just those 4 minutes on the subway were an aural marvel – some of the announcements at the station reminded me of the strange commentary on a Bubble Bobble type game that I’d played on the Playstation and piped birdsong thronged the air at the stations. It occurred to me that my exposure to Japanese culture hasn’t been that high – the Final Fantasy games, one Manga film and copious consumption of Japanese food.
This part of the journey had been quite easy but I still wasn’t quite sure where the hostel actually was. Luckily I ran into 3 Aussie guys who’d just come back from snowboarding just outside the station who were also looking for the hostel so I joined them in trying to find it. We still managed to walk straight past it and had to head back down the road slightly but it was all good in the end. The hostel seemed a bit quiet though and I couldn’t seem to find anyone to go out to dinner with – I hoped that it was just because it was a Sunday and everyone was still recovering from a hard weekend. I got chatting to an American kid, Charlie, who seemed to have major beef with his parents. I got the impression that they were quite well-off and the only reason he was in Japan skipping a semester was to annoy them and spend their money. He also told me how he’d worked at McDonald’s for 3 months for the sole purpose of annoying them. Inevitably we got onto a discussion about the metric system and I had to explain what a stone was and the weird hodgepodge of different systems that we use in the UK. I’ve had these discussions a lot on my trip – still, it’s always a good excuse to point out that, apart from Belize, the USA is the only country in the world to still use Fahrenheit.
He was drinking some beers on the terrace and I decided to go off and get some as well. His directions for the shop weren’t that good though – I found myself wandering through a red light district of ladies bars at the end of the street. Big bouncers in dinner jackets kept trying to usher me into their club (most of them had Dreams in the name) – eventually I backed up and found the convenience store and brought some beers back. It was quite cold in Tokyo; especially after the warmth of Laos, so after another beer run and buying a Cup O’ Noodle for my dinner we headed into the lounge on the 2nd floor.
Here, an incredibly camp guy called Paul completely dominated the conversation. He was vaguely amusing at first but, after many days at the hostel, I came to realise that, as well as being crass and lewd, he was a complete Münchhausen. I quickly tired of his high tales which were designed to shock everyone in the room and would normally concern his sexual exploits that day (although I’m never quite sure when he fitted these encounters in; he always seemed to be in the lounge) or the differences between the tastes and sizes of penises of different cultures. He would even start playing gay porn on his iPad and showing it to everyone – “It’s not porn, it’s educational,” he would say. One time he even put it on the television; I was fortunate not to be in the room when that happened. I knew that if I made a comment against his salacious stories I’d probably be accused of being homophobic; eventually I coped with his endless verbal diarrhoea (which undoubtedly involved at least two guys and a cup) by listening to The XX on my iPod so that I didn’t have to listen to the XXX in the lounge. I’m sure if I’d told similar stories about any heterosexual exploits or started showing everyone straight porn on my laptop I’d have been roundly ostracised and possibly banned from the hostel.
I spent the whole of my first morning in Tokyo trying to sort out my Indian visa. This wasn’t helped by the fact that I went first to the Indian Embassy and then discovered that they’d outsourced the visa applications to another company over the other side of town in Myogadani. In the course of my travels I discovered that Tokyo has two different companies running the subway lines (Tokyo Metro and Toei) and although they intersect at regular points and you can travel between them the tickets do not work on the other lines. This resulted in a few tickets being swallowed by the machines before I’d completed my journey or having to swap them with the attendants at the gates. I resolved to get the Tokyo equivalent of an Oyster card to make my journeys easier in the future.
The map that they’d given me at the Indian Embassy was a crooked photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy and most of the Roman alphabet writing on it was illegible; the Kanji was in an even worse state so, when I initially couldn’t find the visa centre, I also struggled to ask directions of the local people. When I finally found the office it was almost 11am and it closed at 12:30 for lunch. I grabbed a ticket number, filled in the application form and then watched as the ticket numbers clicked over incredibly slowly. I decided to risk heading back to a coffee place where I’d asked for directions earlier and wait it out there for 30 minutes – there were still at least 10 numbers before mine when I returned at 11:50 and I was one of the very last people to be served in the morning session. I was lucky I did manage to get seen before lunch: it took 8 working days to obtain the visa and applications after lunchtime took 9 days – there didn’t seem to be any leeway on this even if I’d offered them more money for an express service. Fortunately, the 8 days was just enough: my visa was due for pickup on the 2nd; the day before the flight that I’d already booked to India. I decided to keep hold of my passport so that I could use it as ID and was told that I’d need to return it on the morning of the 1st at the latest – otherwise my visa would be delayed by additional working days.
Pedestrians crossing the road at Shibuya
With that all sorted I headed back to the hostel and asked where the famous square was that everyone talked about: the Times Square of Tokyo and the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. The receptionist looked puzzled at the Times Square reference but on further explanation she told me it was Shibuya. This commercial and nightlife hub of Tokyo was about a far away from my hostel as was possible; it was my first inkling that the hostel was located a bit far out. I’d first heard about the scramble crossing by Hachikō square from Happy, an Icelandic girl that worked at the hostel in Antigua, Guatemala. She’d told me that every time she crossed the road here (which she did repeatedly) she’d worn her trademark big grin – and it was indeed fun. The traffic stops at all four compass directions at the same time, allowing pedestrians to bundle across the road in which ever direction they desire – there are even diagonal zebra crossings; although when the traffic is stopped you can pretty much walk where you like.
I was starting to feel peckish at this point but although there were lots of restaurants around it was hard to know which ones would actually offer an English or picture menu. I felt quite intimidated by the Kanji and foreignness of it all. I imagined myself to be like Dekkard in Bladerunner: the last Gaijin left on planet Earth whilst all the English-speakers had headed off-world to seek a brave new world of opportunities. Finally I found a ramen bar with a picture menu and ordered what I think was a minced beef ramen with an almost raw egg that you cracked into the top and a side plate of gyoza. This was delicious and I, of course, washed it down with a Kirin beer.
Beef ramen
After dinner I headed back to the hostel and sat in the lounge. Once again, no one seemed to be in any hurry to head out on the town – I think half the problem with the hostel was because it was so far out you really needed to head into town earlier so it involved more forward planning than most travellers are used to – and a lot of the guests seemed to be permanent residents with jobs with no interest in drinking every night. Somehow, even though I had to keep putting my earphones in to block out the blue balderdash of camp Paul, I met an English guy, Alex, that night and we arranged to meet up the next day to visit the Tokyo Imperial Palace together.
Alex knew a good restaurant on the way to Minowa station which was uniquely Japanese. We walked into the restaurant; inserted our coins into a vending machine at the entrance; pressed a big button with a picture of the food we hoped to receive, and then handed the ticket to the chef. It was like freshly cooked FEBO and the food seemed to come almost as soon as we handed the ticket over: which defied all expectations of how long it should take to cook it.
The moat around Edo castle
After our brunch we headed to the Imperial Palace and wandered around the gardens and the remnants of Edo Castle there. Even though it was too early in the year for the main season, I was pleased to see that some cherry blossoms (technically they were plum) had braved the cold weather just for me.
- “Cherry” blossom
After struggling to find an English book the previous day in Shibuya (quite why they translate the names of the stores when they don’t sell anything suitable for foreigners I’m not sure), I’d Googled a store near to the palace. It took us a while to find it and, contrary to the information I’d read online, it didn’t sell any English books or Japanese guidebooks. We were clearly going to have to look elsewhere in town. Alex was looking for some chopsticks for his girlfriend so we decided to go to a big shopping centre in Roppongi called Roppongi Hills. Here we discovered, much to our surprise, that it is incredibly difficult to find chopsticks in Tokyo – or at least chopsticks that looked fancy enough to give as a gift. I did at least manage to find a bookstore with a small selection of English books and bought the Girl Who Played With Fire to feed my new Larsson addiction. I decided against buying a travel guide – they were too expensive and I decided I could find out the necessary information at the hostel.
Alex asked another Gaijin there if he had any ideas where we could buy nice chopsticks and he suggested a department store in Shinjuku called Tokyo Hands so we headed over there. We exited the subway in completely the wrong place and, after wandering around aimlessly for a while, asked an American businessman (at least with the gaijin you were pretty sure they’d speak English) where the shop was. We found it and Alex was able to complete his mission to find some present-worthy chopsticks – although we both baulked at the price.
From there we decided to head up to Akihabara Electric Town – I needed a new hard drive to back my computer up with; my previous one had given up the ghost and I was worried about not having a backup of all my photos from the past 18 months, and Alex wanted to investigate some iPod ripping software. Huge stores filled with every kind of electronic toy lined the streets; I was in heaven. With my new hard-drive in hand we then got another metro back up the road to Ueno where we wanted to buy shinkansen (bullet train) tickets for the next day to Kyoto. A local guy with weird bandages all over his hands decided to help us find the subway – we weren’t immediately sure why but it became apparent as we went to board our train and he asked for some money – we declined and left him behind whining pathetically. I felt a bit guilty but I couldn’t go giving money to every beggar around – Japan was expensive enough.
Neither Alex nor I had invested in a rail pass which, if we’d applied for it whilst we were still outside the country, would have saved us an absolute bomb in rail fees; but this did at least mean that we could get the fastest of the bullet trains – the Nozomi; with an impressive operating speed of 300kmh. We booked this for first thing the next day and then headed back to the hostel to rest our weary feet after a full afternoon of sightseeing and shopping.
After relaxing at the hostel for a while it was once more time to get some food so we went to a Chinese restaurant down the road. The proprietress didn’t speak any English but we were eventually able to order some food by pointing at the pictures and enlisting the help of a guy at the bar who spoke a little bit of English. He then offered us a glass of sake each which, as is the habit of Englishmen when presented with a small shot-sized glass, we both immediately downed. From the looks of shock and disbelief on his and the owner’s face, I think we were supposed to sip it. Sensing a challenge from these strange gaijin, our new friend then bought us another sake from the top shelf. We also demolished this with a flourish – I think they expected us to breathe fire after necking the 56% proof brew and were disappointed when we sat there quite unaffected.
After our dinner we retired to the hostel and then went to bed early, ready for our trip to Kyoto early the next morning. We couldn’t have imagined how much difficulty we’d have meeting up the next day.
