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Narita, Yokohama, and arrival in Tokyo
I'm in the internet cafe in the Shinagawa Prince hotel now. I get a computer for as long as I want, apparently, for buying one drink. It was 500 yen for the drink, which is a lot even for here, though, so I'm going to stick around for a while tonight.
So, from the beginning:
(This computer won't let me switch to using an English keyboard, so I'm going to just touch-type and try to remember to replace all the weird punctuation after I finish writing. Just a warning, in case the punctuation looks strange--it's things like hitting the apostrophe key and getting a colon.)
I got to Logan at 6am for my 8am flight, which was plenty of time. There was a Japanese family in line ahead of me, frantically moving things into boxes to be sent later, because apparently the weight limit had gone down since they came over. The security line was short, and moved quickly, and there were chairs in the waiting area! (When I went to the U.K. two years ago, for some reason the waiting "lounge" was this enormous room with no carpeting or chairs.)
The flight to Chicago wasn't bad, but the one to Narita seemed endless. I never really slept, just went into this sort of zombie mode of napping, and watching 20 minutes of Spiderman 3, and napping, and reading.
As other people had told me, Narita Airport had lots of signs in English, and it was very easy to find my way around. The Customs line was not long, and it moved quickly. Baggage claim was also pretty fast. Then I had to figure out how to get to my hotel. There were several package-shipping counters in the airport, and I probably could have had my suitcase sent to my hotel in Yokohama, but I wasn't feeling quite up to calling them to ask if that would be ok. I'd sent them email to ask, but they never answered it. I called my hotel in Narita to ask about their bus service, inadvertently hung up in the middle of the first call, called back, explained that I wasn't asking for a reservation (their first response had been to tell me that they were full up), but that I'd already made one the previous week, and wanted to know about the bus. They told me when and where it would be, so I went out to the stop.
Good things about Narita Airport: efficiency, helpful information desk people who speak English, lots of detailed signs, numbered bus stops with schedules for the buses from various hotels, and, best of all, no exhaust fumes in the bus waiting area. (I've heard that there are laws here forbidding long idling periods; all I know is that when I waited at Dulles for more than an hour for a bus to show up, I was nearly sick from the fumes after about 10 mintues, and when I waited for 15 minutes at Narita, there were no fumes anywhere.) Bad thing about Narita Airport: no air-conditioning. I was really glad I'd brought some small towels with me, because it lets me wipe my face off every few minutes when I'm not in my hotel room.
In general, public areas here are not air-conditioned. I mentioned this to my at-con roommate, who's spent a lot of time in Japan, and she said that most people just accept what the seasons bring them.
The bus showed up on time, and was air-conditioned, which was pleasant. It took about a half-hour to get to my hotel, and check-in there was pretty easy. I managed part of it in Japanese, but then had to get some explanations in English when everything I said got a response that was way too fast and had too many words I didn't understand. Nonetheless, the person at the desk complimented me on my Japanese, to which I replied (as we'd been told in class), "oh no, it's only so-so." (iie, mada mada desu.).
I went to my room. It was not much smaller than some I'd had in England (I'd been warned that hotel rooms would be tiny here, and they have been small, but not uncomfortably so.) I noticed the little slot that I was supposed to put my key card in, and ignored it at first. After dropping my bags, I went looking for the air-conditioning, because it was very very hot in there, and eventually found a unit on the floor. I pressed the button, and nothing happened. I checked to make sure that it was plugged in, and it was. I contemplated going to the desk to ask for help, and then contemplated passing out from lack of sleep. Then I thought of trying the key card slot. That turned on all of the room lights, and, indeed, allowed me to turn the a/c on. This was a problem: I wasn't going to be able to cool the room while I went out for dinner, since the card key would be with me, and not in its little slot. I sat there for a little while, then went out for dinner anyway.
There are allegedly sights to see in Narita. I didn't find any. I walked about 5 blocks up a street that was supposed to have a supermarket, and found none, and eventually gave up and went back to my hotel, and went into the Japanese restaurant there. I ordered a tempura dinner, which got me pickles, miso soup, and tempura eggplant, prawn, some kind of fish, green pepper, squash, and something starchy with white flesh and a purple skin. That was all good, and saying, "gochiso sama deshita" (it's what you're supposed to say when you're done eating. the literal translation is, I think, "it was a feast".) summoned the waitress to bring me my check, which made me feel triumphant.
By then it was around 7pm. I went back to my room, to activate the a/c, take a shower, and sleep with all of the lights on. There were a lot of lights, but I was tired, so I just put a towel over my face to block them out. Sometime in the middle of the night, when the room had gotten somewhat cool, I tried sleeping without the power, and woke up after an hour because it was too hot. I couldn't sleep through the night, but I did get a reasonable amount of sleep before I gave up at 6am. I then got dressed and went downstairs to have breakfast in the hotel restaurant.
Japanese breakfast=yum. I found that miso soup, rice, baked fish, and some sort of eggplant dish was a fine thing to have in the morning. They also had some western things like eggs, but I ignored those. I then went to my room to get my suitcase, checked out, and ask the desk person how to get to the JR station. She pulled out a map from a case on the desk (I'd been looking for those the previous night, but missed them), and drew a path. It looked pretty straightforward, so I was off. What the map didn't show was that most of that path was uphill at a fairly steep angle. The morning was a little cooler than the previous day had been, but it was still pretty tough. Various commuters passed me on the way up, but I just got out of their way and rested when I needed to.
Eventually I made it to the station, and then waited in line so that I could buy my ticket from a person, because I wasn't sure I was up to dealing with machines in Japanese. (I later found that they all have a button that lets you switch them into English mode, but I didn't know that at that time, and I was still kind of fuzz-brained. And it was really hot, and of course train stations, not being enclosed, have no a/c.) I got a ticket to Sakuragi-cho in Yokohama, and made it there with a little help from friendly passers-by. From there, it was pretty easy to follow the map I'd gotten to my hotel. At the hotel, I explained that I had a reservation, and the clerk looked perturbed, and eventually found someone to tell me in English that it was too early for me to check in. I said that was ok, as long as they could store my suitcase, and they said sure. So I left the suitcase and headed back toward the train station to find the convention center.
On the way to the convention center, I found a Starbucks and got a Frappucino. Some things are constants, and Starbucks seems to be one of them. I'd been told there was a moving walkway that led toward the convention center, so I headed toward the giant arch which seemed to point in the right direction, and sure enough, there it was. It would have been more sfnal if it had moved at faster than a fast walking pace, though. The moving walkway takes you to the Landmark Center, which you walk through to get to Queen Square, which you walk through to get to the walkway to the Convention Center. Most of this named and signed in English as well as Japanese, though the names are all just transliterated into Japanese lettering.
After a couple of hours of helping to set up, I went back to my hotel to check in, and found that the room was quite reasonably sized for two people (my roommate was due to show up later), and that the a/c in this room worked without all of the lights being on. Yay. It worked quite well, in fact, so I was happy. Also, the toilet in the bathroom had a bidet--I think this is the same as the Toto Washlet that's currently being advertised in the U.S. There will be pictures later (of the controls--not of anything more explicit.)
I left a note for my roommate to tell her where I'd be, and ask if it was ok to have the a/c set at 20 (centigrade). The hotel desk people had told me to drop the key off when I left, and I did that, thinking just that they were following British customs. Back to the convention center (about a half-hour trip). Working it out on gmap-pedometer, it looks to be about .9 mile, so I wasn't walking very fast.
Around 6pm, we closed up the desk, because Registration had shut down and everyone was supposed to be closing up. I found some friends who were interested in getting Chinese food, and we got a recommendation from the concierge at their hotel. We took a taxi there, and had a wonderful meal--I wish I'd taken pictures of it. We ended up getting a set meal that was a little pricy, but really good--there were two different kinds of egg rolls (one with shrimp, and one with some kind of meat), spare ribs (just so-so), bitter greens with garlic, a very light and fragrant soup with tender pieces of beef, fried rice with bits of something--sausage? ham?, and a dessert of light coconut soup with tapioca.
Then we took a cab back to my friends' hotel, and I walked the rest of the way to mine. At which point the hotel desk person told me that he didn't have a key, because my roommate had come in, so I should go to our room and ring the bell. I went to our room, and found that there was indeed a bell near the door. Ringing it produced nothing useful, so I went back down to ask if there was a master key or something. The guy dithered for a while, made a phone call, and then told me that my roommate was in the restaurant on the 14th floor. So, I went there. Fortunately she was the only person there (we'd been paired up by the convention roommate-matching service, and had only conversed over email), so I said hi, and explained the key situation. She was surprised and apologetic (they had neglected to tell her to drop the key off), and we chatted for a while to get acquanted, then went to the room, talked some more, and eventually went to sleep.
The next morning we went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, because we both liked Japanese breakfasts. We hadn't originally paid for those with the room, and the charge was 1500 yen each, which we thought was kind of steep, so we didn't do that again. We headed to the convention center together, then I went off to meet my group for the tour of the Studio Ghibli museum. We left a bit late (I'm not entirely sure why), and it took about 2.5 hours to get to the museum. That was ridiculous--we took back roads the whole way, which made it take forever. Someone was speculating that this was because the expressway to Tokyo was a toll road, with high tolls, but I'll bet everyone on the bus would have been willing to pitch in a dollar or two to cover those and halve the time spent on that bus. We were late getting to the museum, which threw everything off because you have to reserve tickets well in advance, and for a specific time. Fortunately, the convention person who'd come along as organizer was able to convince them to let us stay for the full two hours we'd scheduled. However, again with the stupidity, there was no time allowed for lunch, and the trip back was just as long as the trip there. We'd gotten on the bus at 9, gotten to the museum at 11:45, left a bit after 2 (after walking a few blocks to where the bus was parked, then waiting for someone who'd missed the group), and got back to the convention center around 4:30. The museum was nice, but not that nice. All of the signs and narration were in Japanese, the museum was not terribly big and quite crowded, and the gift shop was insanely crowded. I was so desperate for food that I ate at a nearby KFC, then went back to my hotel and collapsed.
Most of the convention stuff I worked on went pretty smoothly. I was disappointed that we weren't really working with our Japanese colleagues--mostly we Americans and Canadians talked to the non-Japanese fans, and the Japanese Information people talked to the Japanese fans. I saw lots of people wandering around in costumes (no pictures, sorry), and told people where various things were. Not much more really exciting food to talk about. I went up on the giant ferris wheel on Friday night, which was a nice way of seeing the city from high up, and went to the Silk Museum on Sunday when I realized that it would be closed on Monday. That was kind of cool--lots of exhibits about the history of silk making, and clothing in Japan, and some insanely cute placards describing the physical characteristics of silk, and actual live silkworms that ate mulberry leaves while I watched! On the way back from there, I had a shrimp burger at a random burger place, and it was really good, except for the half that I couldn't eat because there was mustard or mayonnaise smeared all over it. If I find another burger place with those, I'll have to remember to ask them to leave off the mustard and mayonnaise.
This morning was devoted to saying goodbye to people, meeting my tour group, and getting to Tokyo. The tour people apparently believe in paying tolls, so we got to Tokyo in 40 minutes. My hotel room is a bit smaller than the one in Yokohama, but I have this one to myself, so that's ok. The bathroom is also a little smaller, but this toilet also has a bidet. The air-conditioner seems to be working, so I'm all set.
I took a quick trip to Shinjuku after checking in to get more memory for my camera. (Since I stupidly didn't take![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
twe up on her offer.) The train stations at either end of my trip were huge and complex, so it was a bit of an adventure, but not hard. Have I mentioned that I love the train system here? Entirely automated and complex ticket-purchasing, displays on the tracks that tell you when the next train is coming, flat-panel monitors inside the trains that tell you when the next stop is and how long it'll be to the next few stops...wow. And, all of this is offered in English as well as Japanese.
Shinjuku was amazing--a vista of stores and more stores as far as I could see. I didn't really have time to look around, though--just found the camera store, made my purchase, and headed back, getting to my hotel about 20 minutes before I was supposed to meet the rest of my group for dinner.
We went to a very nice buffet in one of the hotel restaurants--lots of different kinds of food, and most of it good. I took a picture of the assortment of desserts I got, which I'll post after I get home. There was a banana crepe, a strawberry crepe, something like panna cotta, chocolate mousse, and some kind of very light refreshing fruity thing that I was told was grapefruit.
Ok, that's it for tonight.
So, from the beginning:
(This computer won't let me switch to using an English keyboard, so I'm going to just touch-type and try to remember to replace all the weird punctuation after I finish writing. Just a warning, in case the punctuation looks strange--it's things like hitting the apostrophe key and getting a colon.)
I got to Logan at 6am for my 8am flight, which was plenty of time. There was a Japanese family in line ahead of me, frantically moving things into boxes to be sent later, because apparently the weight limit had gone down since they came over. The security line was short, and moved quickly, and there were chairs in the waiting area! (When I went to the U.K. two years ago, for some reason the waiting "lounge" was this enormous room with no carpeting or chairs.)
The flight to Chicago wasn't bad, but the one to Narita seemed endless. I never really slept, just went into this sort of zombie mode of napping, and watching 20 minutes of Spiderman 3, and napping, and reading.
As other people had told me, Narita Airport had lots of signs in English, and it was very easy to find my way around. The Customs line was not long, and it moved quickly. Baggage claim was also pretty fast. Then I had to figure out how to get to my hotel. There were several package-shipping counters in the airport, and I probably could have had my suitcase sent to my hotel in Yokohama, but I wasn't feeling quite up to calling them to ask if that would be ok. I'd sent them email to ask, but they never answered it. I called my hotel in Narita to ask about their bus service, inadvertently hung up in the middle of the first call, called back, explained that I wasn't asking for a reservation (their first response had been to tell me that they were full up), but that I'd already made one the previous week, and wanted to know about the bus. They told me when and where it would be, so I went out to the stop.
Good things about Narita Airport: efficiency, helpful information desk people who speak English, lots of detailed signs, numbered bus stops with schedules for the buses from various hotels, and, best of all, no exhaust fumes in the bus waiting area. (I've heard that there are laws here forbidding long idling periods; all I know is that when I waited at Dulles for more than an hour for a bus to show up, I was nearly sick from the fumes after about 10 mintues, and when I waited for 15 minutes at Narita, there were no fumes anywhere.) Bad thing about Narita Airport: no air-conditioning. I was really glad I'd brought some small towels with me, because it lets me wipe my face off every few minutes when I'm not in my hotel room.
In general, public areas here are not air-conditioned. I mentioned this to my at-con roommate, who's spent a lot of time in Japan, and she said that most people just accept what the seasons bring them.
The bus showed up on time, and was air-conditioned, which was pleasant. It took about a half-hour to get to my hotel, and check-in there was pretty easy. I managed part of it in Japanese, but then had to get some explanations in English when everything I said got a response that was way too fast and had too many words I didn't understand. Nonetheless, the person at the desk complimented me on my Japanese, to which I replied (as we'd been told in class), "oh no, it's only so-so." (iie, mada mada desu.).
I went to my room. It was not much smaller than some I'd had in England (I'd been warned that hotel rooms would be tiny here, and they have been small, but not uncomfortably so.) I noticed the little slot that I was supposed to put my key card in, and ignored it at first. After dropping my bags, I went looking for the air-conditioning, because it was very very hot in there, and eventually found a unit on the floor. I pressed the button, and nothing happened. I checked to make sure that it was plugged in, and it was. I contemplated going to the desk to ask for help, and then contemplated passing out from lack of sleep. Then I thought of trying the key card slot. That turned on all of the room lights, and, indeed, allowed me to turn the a/c on. This was a problem: I wasn't going to be able to cool the room while I went out for dinner, since the card key would be with me, and not in its little slot. I sat there for a little while, then went out for dinner anyway.
There are allegedly sights to see in Narita. I didn't find any. I walked about 5 blocks up a street that was supposed to have a supermarket, and found none, and eventually gave up and went back to my hotel, and went into the Japanese restaurant there. I ordered a tempura dinner, which got me pickles, miso soup, and tempura eggplant, prawn, some kind of fish, green pepper, squash, and something starchy with white flesh and a purple skin. That was all good, and saying, "gochiso sama deshita" (it's what you're supposed to say when you're done eating. the literal translation is, I think, "it was a feast".) summoned the waitress to bring me my check, which made me feel triumphant.
By then it was around 7pm. I went back to my room, to activate the a/c, take a shower, and sleep with all of the lights on. There were a lot of lights, but I was tired, so I just put a towel over my face to block them out. Sometime in the middle of the night, when the room had gotten somewhat cool, I tried sleeping without the power, and woke up after an hour because it was too hot. I couldn't sleep through the night, but I did get a reasonable amount of sleep before I gave up at 6am. I then got dressed and went downstairs to have breakfast in the hotel restaurant.
Japanese breakfast=yum. I found that miso soup, rice, baked fish, and some sort of eggplant dish was a fine thing to have in the morning. They also had some western things like eggs, but I ignored those. I then went to my room to get my suitcase, checked out, and ask the desk person how to get to the JR station. She pulled out a map from a case on the desk (I'd been looking for those the previous night, but missed them), and drew a path. It looked pretty straightforward, so I was off. What the map didn't show was that most of that path was uphill at a fairly steep angle. The morning was a little cooler than the previous day had been, but it was still pretty tough. Various commuters passed me on the way up, but I just got out of their way and rested when I needed to.
Eventually I made it to the station, and then waited in line so that I could buy my ticket from a person, because I wasn't sure I was up to dealing with machines in Japanese. (I later found that they all have a button that lets you switch them into English mode, but I didn't know that at that time, and I was still kind of fuzz-brained. And it was really hot, and of course train stations, not being enclosed, have no a/c.) I got a ticket to Sakuragi-cho in Yokohama, and made it there with a little help from friendly passers-by. From there, it was pretty easy to follow the map I'd gotten to my hotel. At the hotel, I explained that I had a reservation, and the clerk looked perturbed, and eventually found someone to tell me in English that it was too early for me to check in. I said that was ok, as long as they could store my suitcase, and they said sure. So I left the suitcase and headed back toward the train station to find the convention center.
On the way to the convention center, I found a Starbucks and got a Frappucino. Some things are constants, and Starbucks seems to be one of them. I'd been told there was a moving walkway that led toward the convention center, so I headed toward the giant arch which seemed to point in the right direction, and sure enough, there it was. It would have been more sfnal if it had moved at faster than a fast walking pace, though. The moving walkway takes you to the Landmark Center, which you walk through to get to Queen Square, which you walk through to get to the walkway to the Convention Center. Most of this named and signed in English as well as Japanese, though the names are all just transliterated into Japanese lettering.
After a couple of hours of helping to set up, I went back to my hotel to check in, and found that the room was quite reasonably sized for two people (my roommate was due to show up later), and that the a/c in this room worked without all of the lights being on. Yay. It worked quite well, in fact, so I was happy. Also, the toilet in the bathroom had a bidet--I think this is the same as the Toto Washlet that's currently being advertised in the U.S. There will be pictures later (of the controls--not of anything more explicit.)
I left a note for my roommate to tell her where I'd be, and ask if it was ok to have the a/c set at 20 (centigrade). The hotel desk people had told me to drop the key off when I left, and I did that, thinking just that they were following British customs. Back to the convention center (about a half-hour trip). Working it out on gmap-pedometer, it looks to be about .9 mile, so I wasn't walking very fast.
Around 6pm, we closed up the desk, because Registration had shut down and everyone was supposed to be closing up. I found some friends who were interested in getting Chinese food, and we got a recommendation from the concierge at their hotel. We took a taxi there, and had a wonderful meal--I wish I'd taken pictures of it. We ended up getting a set meal that was a little pricy, but really good--there were two different kinds of egg rolls (one with shrimp, and one with some kind of meat), spare ribs (just so-so), bitter greens with garlic, a very light and fragrant soup with tender pieces of beef, fried rice with bits of something--sausage? ham?, and a dessert of light coconut soup with tapioca.
Then we took a cab back to my friends' hotel, and I walked the rest of the way to mine. At which point the hotel desk person told me that he didn't have a key, because my roommate had come in, so I should go to our room and ring the bell. I went to our room, and found that there was indeed a bell near the door. Ringing it produced nothing useful, so I went back down to ask if there was a master key or something. The guy dithered for a while, made a phone call, and then told me that my roommate was in the restaurant on the 14th floor. So, I went there. Fortunately she was the only person there (we'd been paired up by the convention roommate-matching service, and had only conversed over email), so I said hi, and explained the key situation. She was surprised and apologetic (they had neglected to tell her to drop the key off), and we chatted for a while to get acquanted, then went to the room, talked some more, and eventually went to sleep.
The next morning we went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, because we both liked Japanese breakfasts. We hadn't originally paid for those with the room, and the charge was 1500 yen each, which we thought was kind of steep, so we didn't do that again. We headed to the convention center together, then I went off to meet my group for the tour of the Studio Ghibli museum. We left a bit late (I'm not entirely sure why), and it took about 2.5 hours to get to the museum. That was ridiculous--we took back roads the whole way, which made it take forever. Someone was speculating that this was because the expressway to Tokyo was a toll road, with high tolls, but I'll bet everyone on the bus would have been willing to pitch in a dollar or two to cover those and halve the time spent on that bus. We were late getting to the museum, which threw everything off because you have to reserve tickets well in advance, and for a specific time. Fortunately, the convention person who'd come along as organizer was able to convince them to let us stay for the full two hours we'd scheduled. However, again with the stupidity, there was no time allowed for lunch, and the trip back was just as long as the trip there. We'd gotten on the bus at 9, gotten to the museum at 11:45, left a bit after 2 (after walking a few blocks to where the bus was parked, then waiting for someone who'd missed the group), and got back to the convention center around 4:30. The museum was nice, but not that nice. All of the signs and narration were in Japanese, the museum was not terribly big and quite crowded, and the gift shop was insanely crowded. I was so desperate for food that I ate at a nearby KFC, then went back to my hotel and collapsed.
Most of the convention stuff I worked on went pretty smoothly. I was disappointed that we weren't really working with our Japanese colleagues--mostly we Americans and Canadians talked to the non-Japanese fans, and the Japanese Information people talked to the Japanese fans. I saw lots of people wandering around in costumes (no pictures, sorry), and told people where various things were. Not much more really exciting food to talk about. I went up on the giant ferris wheel on Friday night, which was a nice way of seeing the city from high up, and went to the Silk Museum on Sunday when I realized that it would be closed on Monday. That was kind of cool--lots of exhibits about the history of silk making, and clothing in Japan, and some insanely cute placards describing the physical characteristics of silk, and actual live silkworms that ate mulberry leaves while I watched! On the way back from there, I had a shrimp burger at a random burger place, and it was really good, except for the half that I couldn't eat because there was mustard or mayonnaise smeared all over it. If I find another burger place with those, I'll have to remember to ask them to leave off the mustard and mayonnaise.
This morning was devoted to saying goodbye to people, meeting my tour group, and getting to Tokyo. The tour people apparently believe in paying tolls, so we got to Tokyo in 40 minutes. My hotel room is a bit smaller than the one in Yokohama, but I have this one to myself, so that's ok. The bathroom is also a little smaller, but this toilet also has a bidet. The air-conditioner seems to be working, so I'm all set.
I took a quick trip to Shinjuku after checking in to get more memory for my camera. (Since I stupidly didn't take
twe up on her offer.) The train stations at either end of my trip were huge and complex, so it was a bit of an adventure, but not hard. Have I mentioned that I love the train system here? Entirely automated and complex ticket-purchasing, displays on the tracks that tell you when the next train is coming, flat-panel monitors inside the trains that tell you when the next stop is and how long it'll be to the next few stops...wow. And, all of this is offered in English as well as Japanese. Shinjuku was amazing--a vista of stores and more stores as far as I could see. I didn't really have time to look around, though--just found the camera store, made my purchase, and headed back, getting to my hotel about 20 minutes before I was supposed to meet the rest of my group for dinner.
We went to a very nice buffet in one of the hotel restaurants--lots of different kinds of food, and most of it good. I took a picture of the assortment of desserts I got, which I'll post after I get home. There was a banana crepe, a strawberry crepe, something like panna cotta, chocolate mousse, and some kind of very light refreshing fruity thing that I was told was grapefruit.
Ok, that's it for tonight.