Friday, May 19, 2006

Japan: Backtracking and Backpacking

Let's go back a bit. I'll now write about a few days ago, when we were still in Tokyo. Gretchen and I are both staying in Japan after the LBAT program to work abroad, meaning we had a lot of extra clothes and such that we wouldn't be needing until after LBAT. Fortunately, Gretchen's company (JCD) allowed us to keep a bag each here while we were in Fukuoka so that we wouldn't have to worry about it so our next quest was to find her company with our bags so they could hold them for us.

Now we were staying at the Holiday Inn by Narita Airport, which is about 45 minutes to an hour away from Tokyo by train. We checked out of our hotel at 8am, left our luggage at the hotel to pickup before we went back to the airport for our flight to Fukuoka, then took the train with the two bags in hand and my laptop (I didn't want to leave it at the hotel with the rest of the bags).

We bought the cheapest train that would take us to Tokyo from Narita (the JR Line Rapid Train) for 1280円. Unfortunately, we didn't quite understand the train systems yet, so we didn't take the first train that we could, and thus we had to wait about 45 minutes for the next Rapid Train (the others were Limited Express which are more expensive and make less stops).

We finally got to Tokyo at around noon (we were trying to get there around 11am) and transfered to the Yamanote line to go up to Ueno where JCD is located. We then reached Ueno and tried to follow Gretchen's map, which she had copied down from the company website into her Palm Tungsten. We obviously didn't know where to start from the train station, so we asked a police officer in a police box and he gave a really awful map and some directions to get to the building.

We walked and walked and walked and turned and walked and eventually we figured we'd walked to far and stopped somewhere to ask a local if he could help us. The local spoke no English but he very excited pointed towards the direction we'd come from and said such words that I caught as "second traffic light" and "white building." We wandered around some more, then decided it was best for Gretchen to call her company to get better directions from someone we could understand. The person who answered the phone spoke no English and the person with whom Gretchen kept Email correspondance was not in the office so after some time, Gretchen finally got them to agree to meet us in front of the nearby McDonalds she thought. In any case we waited about 15 minutes and started to get pretty discouraged. Then a woman approached us and it was actually the person Gretchen spoke to via Email and not the one who she talked to on the phone (yay! English speaker!). We finally relinquished ourselves of our extra luggage, though I still had my laptop case, and were really hungry so we stopped at a local restaurant to grab a bite to eat.

We were standing outside the restaurant and the people inside saw me and started waving (I figured because they knew we were foreigners). We went inside and they saw me then said "ちがいます!すみません!すみません!" which basically means "Oops we were wrong, sorry, sorry." Apparently they'd thought I was someone else. Anyway, we were looking at the items to choose from and trying to pick the one with the least kanji (so we'd know what were getting). We then just decided to get カレうどん (curry udon), but they didn't have curry... So she started saying other stuff and I decided to get curry with tempura. Gretchen was having trouble deciding what she wanted instead, but then they informed us that they had enough curry for one person, but not both of us so she got that. The food was good, except Gretchen's was too spicy.

Having fed ourselves (my food was only like 340円!) we walked back to the train station. We were going to go to Akihabara so that I could buy myself a digital camera, but our time in Ueno took longer than expected so we ended up deciding against that and heading back to Narita. We looked around the Ueno train station for a faster train (but cheaper than the JR Limited Express which was twice the price of the JR Rapid), but couldn't find one so we decided just to take the JR Rapid line, which took FOREVER. Plus we had to transfer trains at Narita to get to the Airport, which took even more time. Needless to say we got to the Narita airport at 4:50pm for our 5:55pm flight, then ran to a taxi (remember? we still had our luggage at the airport and we didn't want to wait for shuttles!). Took the taxi to the hotel, asked the taxi driver to wait (in Japanese), grabbed our bags, then ran back to the airport. 5:10pm.

Run run run run until we get to the domestic check-in. Of course, we get a trainee at the check-in counter... so she has a supervisor explaining to her what she's doing and she also doesn't speak English very well. Anyway, it's creeping on 5:20pm, 35 minutes before the flight leaves, and she's asking us all these questions (since the flight was full we couldn't sit together) to which we kept replying "That's fine! That's fine!" since we just wanted to get on the plane. She then explained that we had to take a middle seat each! Agh! The last thing she said was "Make sure you get to the gate by 5:30pm" which was ironic because she was holding us up so much. We then run to the gate and get there around 5:26pm! We actually made it with time to spare so Gretchen got a drink because she was thirsty from all the running around we did. We got on the flight, took off and I promptly fell asleep and woke up when we landed (I was out cold).

Fukuoka was rainy (something about a typhoon) and we arrive at the Seminar House after a taxi ride. Wait in the lobby as check-in process goes on; catch up a bit with the other LBAT participants. Everyone else was obviously very tired because they'd just gotten in that day so they'd been flying all day. We get explained the rules, get our keys, then have to carry our luggage up the third floor because there's no elevator. We get explained more rules then head to our rooms. Some rules: 11pm curfew period (gate closes) and we are only allowed to use the showers in the basement (communal) from 9pm - 11pm. Since we got in at 10pm, we got extended special permission until 12am for that night. I take a shower. People try to use Internet, but fail miserably as the temporary usernames / passwords do not work. We'd have to wait until we got our Fukuoka University (FU... hehe) student IDs.

Fall asleep on the rock-hard beds and pillows to wake up decently early to go to Fukuoka University for our campus tour / orientation. More on that to come. Also some pictures as I have now purchased my digital camera from "ビックカメラ" (Bic Camera). I'm kinda tired now and wrote this long entry so that will have to wait. おやすみなさい! (Good night!)

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