Chronicles of Carlo: Japan 2006, Part 1

This is a beginning of a 10 part series about my trip to Japan. On October 6-16, I had an opportunity to visit this magnificent country and all it's splendor and cultural richness. In a matter of a few days, I was able to view some great areas and experience the culture first hand. On a separate note, I will be editing these with pictures as soon as I can. So check back often to see if I placed any new ones. With that being said, my story begins with:

Day 1

The flight into Japan was a long, tiring one. They said it was a 12 hour flight, but in actually was 15-17 hour flight due to delays. While in the plane, they served us a dinner, mid-flight snack, and breakfast. The in flight movies were X3, Cars, and Garfield 2. I've never seen Cars, which was actually pretty funny itself. Pixar really has a way of putting subtle adult humor in a childrenÂ’s movie and still get away with it. Whoever made Garfield 2 should be shot, because it was one of those films where they tried way to hard to make dialogue funny. X3 was the only movie I knew and really liked.

On long flights like this one, I usually try to sleep most of it off so the time goes by faster. Unfortunately, I couldn't do it for some reason on this particular flight. So, in between the eating and movie watching, I was playing my Nintendo DS. There was this girl sitting across the aisle from me and she had Mario Kart and Animal Crossings. We played a few times on Mario Kart, losing horribly. I wished there were more people available on that flight that played so I would at least have a chance at winning a race.

When we landed, there were still some things to take care of. First was getting past immigration. During the flight we were given these embarking/disembarking cards which we foreigners had to fill out as we entered Japan. It didn't go so bad because I was flagged over to check in the Japanese only immigration. The lady didn't speak a word to me and just stamped my passport and let me be on my way. The second thing we had to do was get our money exchanged. At the time we went to the line, there was already a group waiting, so we stood in line for a good hour or so. I decided to write out 3 traveler's checks for $300, but didn't know how to fill out the form. It ended up being that one of the guys working there did it for me, motioning me through the form on where to sign my name and all that stuff. It's really tough when you don't know the language enough to actually make your point across. So far, this is the biggest obstacle to overcome. As I was finishing up getting my money, a couple police officers in suits came up to interrogate us. They were asking us what we planned to do here, where we were staying, how long we were staying, etc, etc. At the end, they ended up taking our passport numbers. I don't know why they had to hassle us like that, but I guess to them it seems weird to see 4 Americans traveling together without a touring group.

On top of the troubles at airport, our next adventure was trying to figure out the train system and how use our newly acquired rail passes. After another 30 minutes discussing on what stuff meant, we finally found out where we had to go. We took a direct train to the Shin-Osaka station where our hostel was located. It was about an hour train ride, and all of us were just ready to go to bed. When we did get to the hostel, it was such an interesting scene. There were people hanging out in the lobby (which is what I'm doing now, trying to recall what's been happening these past few days). The first night was interesting because the people in the lobby were playing instruments and stuff, looked like such a hippy scene. Another thing was that the lobby wasn't full of Japanese people, it was a bunch of Americans and Europeans trying to be Japanese, which was the funniest thing of all. The lobby itself is pretty small, but their library is full of Japanese manga.

The hostel lobby is located on the 10th floor of some building; our room was on the 9th. Luckily there was an elevator going from the first floor, because I know I wouldn't have survived bringing my bags up ten flights of stairs. As I headed to the room, I noticed that there was a public bathroom and a public washroom. Our room itself consisted of 4 bunks, and 2 futons for the tatami mats. I also found out that there was only 1 shower stall in the ENTIRE hostel. So that meant that if I wanted to go take a shower around the time people go to bed or wake up, I'd have to wait in line to take a shower. The toilets worked a little different here as well. There's no toilet, just a thing on the ground that looks like a mini urinal. I'm always afraid of using them because I might pull a muscle. Finally, the last surprise about this hostel was that you roomed with 5 other people. It was 4 in my party already when we went in our room to sleep. We thought nothing of it and just laid all our stuff on the floor like we'd usually do in a hotel. However, about an hour later, this older man comes in saying that he's sleeping in the room as well. We quickly cleaned up after our slob, American selves, trying to save face to this stranger. Another 30 minutes pass by and our final roommate comes. Initially, we thought our room was pretty roomy for being a Japanese room, but with the 2 others that joined us, it went back to the pre-conceived thought. All I can really remember was being very tired and falling asleep shortly after our 2nd roommate came in.