Touch-down in Tokyo!

It's 03:45 on the morning after my first half-day in Japan. Due to jet-lag, excitement, a spike in adrenalin (or something) after taking my asthma pump, or a combination of these factors, I am aWakE! While this is mildly inconvenient from the point of view of having to function in the real world a bit later today (that's tomorrow for most of you ;)), is it rather convenient for my blog as it allows me to write! (Yay!)

Yesterday the 29th of July 2012 was the start of a dream-come-true for me. I have wanted to come to Japan for such a long, long time, and yesterday we touched down with a graceful landing at Tokyo's Narita airport.

From there, we took a 90 minute bus ride to the Keio Plaza Hotel in what seems like the heart of Tokyo, and very close to Shinjiku Train Station.

Originally the plan had been to get to the hotel, phone home, shower and have a power nap. Instead I realised that I didn't in fact have the correct charger for my laptop, and hey I was in Tokyo baby(!) so instead my wife and I decided to ignore my literally cramping foot muscles and hit the streets if Tokyo...

The view from our hotel room (14th floor)

And I'm very glad I did!

My first impressions of Tokyo are that it's very clean and green for a capital city. At one point I remarked that it's like the whole city looked like a gold course; although I'll admit it's a bit of an exaggeration due to being a bit overcome by The Awesome at this point. Nevertheless, it is very green, and there are enormous trees lining the streets of Tokyo. Lush green ivy also appears to be everywhere, and the drive into the city took us past more than a few rice paddies (or similarly attractive grass-like fields).

Also, and maybe this is because it's a Sunday afternoon, Tokyo doesn't feel very full. Having said that, while walking around the streets of Tokyo I did have one of those moments where, like a scene from Lord of the Rings or The Last Samurai, two armies simultaneously commence an advance from opposing sides of a road, disappearing into one another's rank and file. The difference being of course that the clash of swords is replaced by the sound of designer heels clicking on asphalt.

When hitting the streets, Taryn, my wife and I, simply chose a direction which seemed to be roughly in the direction of a massive book store we had heard about that stocked English books; hoping to find a super-simple English-Japanese dictionary.

The Streets of Tokyo... on a Sunday night

On the way we stumbled across a multi-level (at least 5 floors) technology store in which we found the charger we were looking for. We did this by bringing the incorrect adapter we had, pointing to it and saying in Japanese “Nihon de”, which we hope means “for Japan”. The shop assistant asked us “PC or Notebooku” to which we said “notebooku!”. The guy escorted us to the correct isle and I noticed the first adapter he showed us only had 2 input wires so I drew his attention to this by saying “san-ban, ni-ban”, meaning “three-number, two-number” and together we quickly identified the correct laptop charger adapter.

The interaction was exciting and illuminating. Exciting because like Neo from the Matrix, I felt like “I know Japanese!”... well you know... enough to get by in this simple scenario, which is great! And illuminating because I still have so much to learn! For instance, “Where can I pay for this?” would have been a great sentence to know, instead I looked at him with the universal expression that says, “Ok, I'm a mime, so read what I mean from my body language” I pointed at my wallet, shrugged and said “doko ni?” meaning “where?”(... which also probably makes me a terrible mime, but hey... do you even get such a thing as a “good mime”?!?)

We found the bookstore eventually, but we struggled to find a dictionary dumbed-down enough for us, so we decided to delay our purchase until a bit later in the week as it seems likely someone will recommend one during our orientation.

Fake food. That's right, plastic food... placed on the sidewalks to give customers a preview of the food provided

After hunting for dictionaries, Taryn and I hunted for food. McDonalds was very tempting, but we resisted it's powerful seduction and opted instead to try a simple looking Japanese restaurant, and I'm so glad we did. I've been watching Naruto eat Ramen with incredible passion for ages, so last night I thought, the time has come... it's time to try Ramen. So Taryn ordered a pork ramen and I ordered a pork and fish ramen, which we had with the glass of unsterilized cold water presented to us on arrival. This was quite an adventurous selection for me as pork and fish would never be something I'd even consider mixing at home, however I'm pleased to report that it was delicious! and there are no signs of deli-belly so far :D.

Ramen!

Ramen is basically a plate of spaghetti-like noddles served in a savoury broth. With our ramen we had a boiled egg which is presented as a de-shelled egg floating in the broth, and the broth contains some small pieces of meat as well. Although no-one back home will believe this, a noodle broth that tastes slightly like fish paste with an egg floating in it is actually divine! (The egg's the best part!) I'm so glad I had the courage to try it! I'm not even a big fan of noodles, but I loved it and found myself slurping up my spaghetti with abandon, which resulted in me creating a puddle of ramen broth all around me (no seriously!) as me slurping spaghetti has much the same effect as a Labrador having a good shaking down after bath-time.

After this we went back to the hotel to iron our shirts for the week and try and get a good nights sleep before the big day tomorrow... Well, I've enjoyed the sleep I've had, and perhaps after getting this off my chest, I'll be able to sleep a little more :D.

Enjoy your day everybody. I suspect it's gonna be a good one! :D