readsalot: (Default)
Because it's been very difficult to find coin laundries anywhere nearby, I washed a bunch of clothes in the sink last night. O, the glamorous life. I'm hoping they'll be dry enough to pack tomorrow morning.

This morning, after getting up and transferring the wet clothes from hanging around the bathtub to the closet, I took my breakfast coupon and went in seek of food. The excellent buffet restaurant had a very long line, and the Japanese restaurant had a shorter but still noticeable one, so I went to the food court, which had both Japanese and Western food. I got miso soup, two different kinds of fish, shu-mai, noodles, rice, and a glass of what I think was guava juice. All good, but I may try to get up earlier and try for the buffet restaurant tomorrow.

and the tour begins )

Tomorrow we go to look at Mount Fuji. I don't know what the internet situation will be like for the next few days, but I'll update again when I can. I'm getting tired of this keyboard's betrayal, so I'll sign off now. (I just typed this whole thing for the second time when the first time through went into some kind of weird wide Unicode thing that I couldn't get it out of, and now the keyboard has gone into a mode where it keeps trying to turn my typing into hiragana.) They don't have the English language mode installed on this machine, which makes life difficult.
readsalot: (Yuuko [xxxHolic])
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.)

The flight was uneventful, but long )

It's really hot in Japan )

There was a Worldcon )

In which my hotel is really stupid )

Tokyo at last )

Ok, that's it for tonight.
readsalot: (Default)
This is going to be a quick update, because I don't have much time left on this computer.

I got here on Tuesday afternoon, and went to my hotel in Narita (small city near the airport, about an hour's train ride from Tokyo). There were supposed to be sights, but none were very nearby, and I didn't have the energy to walk far in the extreme heat and humidity anyway, so I had dinner at the hotel and went to bed. In the morning, I had breakfast at the hotel (I find that I like Japanese breakfasts), and walked some noticeable distance (uphill) to the train station.

I bought a ticket for Yokohama, and with a little help from various friendly people, got here, and found my hotel with very little difficulty. It's a nice hotel, and the A/C in my room works very well, which is a comfort. It takes me about a half-hour to walk to the convention center, so I don't go back and forth much.

I've had one really nice meal (in Chinatown), and a few ok ones--a lot of the restaurants near the convention center are overpriced tourist traps and it's difficult to find the good ones.

The Ghibli Museum was nice, except that all the signs were in Japanese, which I couldn't read very well, and I apparently managed to completely miss one of the gift shops. Oh well.

I'll try to post more later. Bye for now!
readsalot: (Yuuko [xxxHolic])
To do:

Buy something local so I can give small gifts (found some very cute postcards at Porter Square Books)
Buy yen
Print out details about the Big Heart award* (I'm transporting the actual award plaque because the presenter is already in Japan)
Print out airline e-ticket information so that the TSA people have something to scribble on
Figure out how to get to my hotel in Narita
Figure out how to get from Narita to my hotel in Yokohama
Figure out how to get my digital camera out of movie mode
Post my itinerary here for safe-keeping
Find a hotel in Tokyo for the last day of my trip** (everything else is set.)
Get a color print cartridge (to enable printing)
Print out maps of the areas around various hotels
Pack
Find a bathroom scale so I can weigh my bag ***

Edited to add: itinerary has now been posted, and I booked a hotel room for the last day.

The Big Heart Award is given to someone who's being recognized as being generally helpful and nice. It's a fannish thing.

I'm not worried about this--there are lots of hotels in Tokyo, and even a reasonable number of inexpensive ones. I've got a query in to one hotel, and I expect to hear back from them by tomorrow; if that one's full, I have another prospect that allows internet booking, and if that falls through, I'll just call around when I get there.

The group tour I'm on ends up in Osaka, and we're being flown from there to Narita when the tour ends. The problem is that, while ANA's international flights allow you to check two 23kg bags, their domestic flights only allow one 20kg bag. I have a duffel bag that will fold up to fit inside my one big bag, but I want to know about how much things weigh before I leave so I'll know how close to the limit I am before I start buying things; if necessary, I can pack the smaller bag with what I need for the last couple of days and just send the big bag to the airport to wait for me. There are many package-delivery services in Japan, and it's quite common for suitcases to travel separately from their owners.

Profile

readsalot: (Default)
readsalot

March 2010

S M T W T F S
 1234 56
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324 252627
28293031   

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 29th, 2025 02:30 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios