Successful Arrival, Post-Arrival Travel, and Shopping Excursions

As promised, we have the more in-depth exploration of Anna’s Japan adventures below. Each section is labeled with what exactly is going on in said section, so feel free to skip any that seem less than interesting. Also, this was all written in about forty minutes before I had to head out and, as a result, is not proofread, so I apologize for any grammatical failure in the following entry. Here goes!!

Initial travel: Went pretty well (at least, as well as 20 hours of travel can be expected to go) right up until I arrived at Narita Airport where I proceeded to stand in what I thought was the customs line for upwards of twenty minutes before someone took pity on my baka gaijin (idiot foreigner) self and told me that I was in the wrong place and directed me to where I wanted to be. After that, immigration went quick and customs went even more disturbingly quickly—no one even asked to check my bags. Not that I’m complaining, but it was a little disconcerting. Anyway, after that I proceeded to have a brief freak-out about meeting up with Kim, Nora and James to get to our hostel because I was so late, but I found the meeting place pretty quick and Kim and Nora showed up soon after. After which we waited for James for no less than an hour, but we never ran into him, so we went ahead to the hostel. We weren’t totally sure about how to get there. We got in what we thought was a ‘limousine’ that would cost us about $30 a piece, but turned out to be more like $60 apiece. We then had to walk for about fifteen minutes—including a trip up and down a flight of stairs—to get to our hostel, and then there was some confusion about our reservation. Luckily they got us in and we had a place to spend the night. The excitement regarding this fortune was, however, quickly discounted when James called and we realized that we were in different hostels, which explained the reservation issues. We agreed to meet up at the train station in the morning, but it was still rather frustrating. Needless to say I was totally exhausted by this point and totally ready to write an angry, ranting blog entry. Which didn’t happen for the following reason.

Shower at the hostel: One of the only redeeming factors of the first day. The shower in question were Japanese style, meaning it was made up of what is basically a handheld showerhead at knee-level set in front of a little stool which you use to wash your hair, shave, and otherwise get cleaned up. This is coupled with a bathtub full of hot water, with the idea that you clean up with the showerhead and then soak in the bathtub after you’re all nice and clean. It may sound a little strange—I know that as much as people pimped it to me I was still always a little weirded out by it—but that was quite possibly the most soothing shower I’ve had in a long time.

Morning travel to ICU: After the relative failure of Friday’s travel, Saturday was significantly more successful, not to mention more entertaining. On the way up to the train station Nora, Kim and I stopped to grab breakfast at a convenience store where, as mentioned earlier, we were accosted by a clearly inebriated Japanese man that tried to tell us that we were going the wrong way. His friends cleared up the potential for misunderstanding and tried to get him to leave us alone. I stayed with the bags while Kim and Nora went to get breakfast, and it was not two minutes before said drunkard decided to come up and make conversation with me. He was totally friendly and we had a nice conversation (in Japanese) before his friends dragged him off again. Not long after that a woman was walking by with her daughter and I had a nice little conversation with them too. This all preceded our successful navigation of Japanese public transportation, meet-up with James at Musashi-sakai station, and arrival at ICU, all before 11:00.

Lunch, Dinner, and Shopping: In which we wandered the campus, found no food, and then basically got on a bus until we saw food. We got off and wandered some more until we found a nice little soba restaurant where I had Katsu (we’re guessing it was pork, but I’m still not totally certain) and some absolutely delicious miso soup. We then wandered around and found a 99 Yen store (the Japanese equivalent of a dollar store) and I bought about two days worth of breakfast in the form of peanut butter buns and a questionable strawberry milk-like drink. After that we walked back to ICU (we actually hadn’t made it very far on the bus) and hung out until orientation and dinner where the RAs took us to various restaurants and we had more successful ordering of food in Japanese. They then took us to a little grocery store where I bought food for another two or three days in the (relatively) boring form of strawberry yogurt.

The remainder of the evening was spent (unsuccessfully) trying to get in touch with my family before I crashed for the night.

Today’s adventures: The result of the fact that Kim, James and I all failed to realize that we could get cell phones at the airport and that this was, in fact, the best plan. As a result, we all got up early this morning (after I again tried and failed to get in touch with my family and ate a minimalist breakfast because I wasn’t hungry) the three of us braved the train system again and headed back out to the airport to get cell phones. Once there, because there were some complications due to the fact that Kim and I forgot our passports, we had to wait around for about ninety minutes while they cleared up some issues with the company to clear James to be the contact for three phones on his one passport. We wandered around and fought with ATMs while we waited and found an awesome little restaurant while we waited. After we got our phones (all three, thankfully) we headed back to Shinjuku for some window-shopping. We managed to wander to the top of a six-story mall, and yet failed to find shoes for Kim or jewelry sufficiently sparkly to set off the price for me. We wandered some more until we ran into some other people from our program. I want to pause and point out how spectacular this is because Shinjuku makes up a pretty sizeable chunk of greater Tokyo, but hey, there you go. While there we took pictures in Japan’s world-famous (not really, but I like to think so) photo booths, which I will be posting as soon as I get my hands on them from Kim. We then wandered in our slightly larger group for another twenty minutes or so before heading back to school. I elected to go back to ICU with the girls rather than g out to dinner with the boys and ate in my room while I rested my feet instead. What can I say? I’d been wandering around for about nine hours at that point, so I was a little tired.

I am now sitting in my room having demolished about half of my peanut butter buns (much more delicious than they probably sound) and about a third of my no-longer-questionable strawberry milk drink (I LOVE IT) and am about to head out to study for my placement test tomorrow morning and figure out what I’m going to do about a bike while I’m here.

If you made it through all of that, I’m impressed; it was a lot. You can expect more updates soon. Hope you’re well!!

~ Anna