6/19/2008: *on the train to Kyoto!*
Where did I leave off...oh yes-so within the first few moments of Japan we were introduced to utter silence and organization from the airport and then instant chaos...and we met our first bum as the first person we conversed with. Awesome. Japan ichiban! Then as we are still in awe of making it and seeing rushing lil' busy bees around us-we eagerly search for our hotel Sun Route Plaza. Sure, one would imagine that we'd simply just search for the sign-but homies, let me just tell you-Tokyo is the sweet big ol' apple NY plus the sinnest of all cities Vegas combined, tossed in a blender, shaken, spiked and laced with all unknown goodies and then shockingly but politely searched to you on a Japanese tray. Our heads were spinning and our hearts racing and then the needless anxiety of feeling like perhaps we'll NEVER find the hotel. To our surprise-not many speak English as us pigheaded Americans imagined. When we'd ask in English if they know of this hotel many gawked, many chuckled and many blushed. Or the few that knew some English would say random words they knew like "Uh...hoteru? Ai, oooh...no-no". Or if they knew decent English they'd simply say that they've never heard of it. At the time I was shocked because back at home I know my surroundings! How would they now know where a damn hotel is?! Later, after frolicking in the city I completely understand why. Well, to not keep you believing we were lost for hours, albeit it was a good hour of so-we finally found it by the miracle of Zeus.
But hold up-I don't think I explained fully the b.s we went through with the airplane and Travelocity. So I explained missing the plane and forcing the airline to fork out a hotel for us, but I also called Travelocity to explain what happen and to change our airflight from the 23rd to the 24th since we unnecessarily lost a day. Travelocity said this ought not to be a problem (advice-NEVER trust businesses!! They are shrewd entities!!!!) So while in the LA hotel, Travelocity ensured that our airflight will be on the 24th and our hotel check out will also be for the 24th...
Well, when we get to the hotel-guess what! They were never told by Travelocity! What a shocker, right? So we spend more of *our* money to buy a calling card in to which Travelocity replied with "oops..we had the wrong fax number for the hotel-don't worry, we'll make it right this time." So we've wasted over an hour and we've wasted about $50, but..we believed it was taken care of.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Day one of trip
6/18/08:
Thursday the 12th in the U.S., Michael and I hustle to make it to the PHX airport on time, which we do through the 40 mph driving and intense worrying of Shirley. However, through Delta-the plane was an 1 & 20 minutes late! Causing us to miss our flight from LAX to NRT! So then we had to go through all the b.s. of re-collecting our baggages (mind you, took 3 hours) then bitching out Delta and forcing them to get us a hotel and a new flight out, which naturally they were reluctant to do. They tried saying that it would be a few days before we could leave and we weren't going to allow that!-but we got a flight out for the next day. Spent $50 in hotel phone calls to Shirley letting her know we were okay, a six-pack that we barely touched and a $10 movie which we never ended up even watching (Dewey Cox...). Michael was also pissed at me because I was not willing to spend $50 for a one way taxi ride to some fancy schmancy strip in LA (Sunset Blvd I think he said?) and then pay that amount to get home too-$100 joy ride is just ridiculous to me. Why spend that money and we weren't even in Japan yet!?! You feel me right? Anyway-we make it to the airport the next day spending already ~$100 in hotel and food expenses and the plane was on time to take us to Portland! We make it to Portland and...they had a Rogue Brewery Restaurant! We had lunch there, walked around aimlessly and the plane finally arrived to take us to Tokyo! The airflight was insane. We actually got the best economy seats ever! Front row with LOTS of space in comparison to the other seats on the plane. It was long-the first 6 hours were fine-but knowing that there will be 5 more hours was excruciating-especially since your body starts to tense up and my god damn remote for the TV wasn't working correctly. And not to mention-like all movie stereotypes of a plane ride-there was a freakin' baby in the next aisle that would temperamentally cry like all hell broke loose, which sprayed fiery needles into my bleak soul. Ironic that I detest babies crying when I intern at a PEDs hospital..hmph.
We drank wine for free, fortunately-in due to the mistake of the stewardess. Plane food isn't bad per se-it just isn't very scrumptious either.
*Random note-people in Japan bow for everything! The train inspector walks through the aisles randomly and when they make it to the end of the car they always bow! How adorable (oh, I'm writing this on a train ride in Japan)*
Back to the plane chit chat-so yes-the plane ride was long-ridiculously long-OH! One more thing that causes me to believe Japs are robots. The moment the plane was in motion-all of their heads rested in a uniform position of "turned off" and they all instinctively went to sleep...it was nuts..It was something one would see in Village of the Damned of something...
So wait-all of this and we still aren't in Japan! But of course we eventually make it. When we land it was NUTS! The airport was eerily silent, but there's a lot of people moving around. All the signs were naturally in their crazy symbols aka Kanji-I'll call it jibber jabber-and it was actually sort of confusing at first because no one spoke English-and you must remember it's our first few moments of grasping the layout of Japan from an airport so it was kind of blinding at first. However, after filling out the right forms to allow us to enter the country, getting our finger prints forever engrained in the system and an awful picture taken (I mean seriously...what the fuck, who asks someone to take an ID picture after being on an airplane for that long?!?!) we emerge from the airport into the densely packed station of Japan. This is where we had to figure out changing out JR certificate into an official JR pass, buy postcards/stamps and soak up the pure awesomeness of actually BEING in Japan; which to this very moment I still am shocked about.
Drunken with sleep deprivation, yet irreversibly electric with giddy awe-Michael and I manage to find the right route which will lead us to our hotel in the Shinjuku district. We make it and the madness begins! We emerge from the station to see the fiery hustle and bustle of the city, afterall it *was* a Saturday night in Tokyo and the night of the city was alive! Relatively shocked of the ants crowding the streets in the recognizable moments and familiarity- we try to search through them for our hotel. We were lost and we know how to ask nothing yet in Japanese-so no one was of help. Then a "sweet" man approached Michael, welcoming him to Japan and then within moments tried asking for money. Hmph. Clever beggar.
Thursday the 12th in the U.S., Michael and I hustle to make it to the PHX airport on time, which we do through the 40 mph driving and intense worrying of Shirley. However, through Delta-the plane was an 1 & 20 minutes late! Causing us to miss our flight from LAX to NRT! So then we had to go through all the b.s. of re-collecting our baggages (mind you, took 3 hours) then bitching out Delta and forcing them to get us a hotel and a new flight out, which naturally they were reluctant to do. They tried saying that it would be a few days before we could leave and we weren't going to allow that!-but we got a flight out for the next day. Spent $50 in hotel phone calls to Shirley letting her know we were okay, a six-pack that we barely touched and a $10 movie which we never ended up even watching (Dewey Cox...). Michael was also pissed at me because I was not willing to spend $50 for a one way taxi ride to some fancy schmancy strip in LA (Sunset Blvd I think he said?) and then pay that amount to get home too-$100 joy ride is just ridiculous to me. Why spend that money and we weren't even in Japan yet!?! You feel me right? Anyway-we make it to the airport the next day spending already ~$100 in hotel and food expenses and the plane was on time to take us to Portland! We make it to Portland and...they had a Rogue Brewery Restaurant! We had lunch there, walked around aimlessly and the plane finally arrived to take us to Tokyo! The airflight was insane. We actually got the best economy seats ever! Front row with LOTS of space in comparison to the other seats on the plane. It was long-the first 6 hours were fine-but knowing that there will be 5 more hours was excruciating-especially since your body starts to tense up and my god damn remote for the TV wasn't working correctly. And not to mention-like all movie stereotypes of a plane ride-there was a freakin' baby in the next aisle that would temperamentally cry like all hell broke loose, which sprayed fiery needles into my bleak soul. Ironic that I detest babies crying when I intern at a PEDs hospital..hmph.
We drank wine for free, fortunately-in due to the mistake of the stewardess. Plane food isn't bad per se-it just isn't very scrumptious either.
*Random note-people in Japan bow for everything! The train inspector walks through the aisles randomly and when they make it to the end of the car they always bow! How adorable (oh, I'm writing this on a train ride in Japan)*
Back to the plane chit chat-so yes-the plane ride was long-ridiculously long-OH! One more thing that causes me to believe Japs are robots. The moment the plane was in motion-all of their heads rested in a uniform position of "turned off" and they all instinctively went to sleep...it was nuts..It was something one would see in Village of the Damned of something...
So wait-all of this and we still aren't in Japan! But of course we eventually make it. When we land it was NUTS! The airport was eerily silent, but there's a lot of people moving around. All the signs were naturally in their crazy symbols aka Kanji-I'll call it jibber jabber-and it was actually sort of confusing at first because no one spoke English-and you must remember it's our first few moments of grasping the layout of Japan from an airport so it was kind of blinding at first. However, after filling out the right forms to allow us to enter the country, getting our finger prints forever engrained in the system and an awful picture taken (I mean seriously...what the fuck, who asks someone to take an ID picture after being on an airplane for that long?!?!) we emerge from the airport into the densely packed station of Japan. This is where we had to figure out changing out JR certificate into an official JR pass, buy postcards/stamps and soak up the pure awesomeness of actually BEING in Japan; which to this very moment I still am shocked about.
Drunken with sleep deprivation, yet irreversibly electric with giddy awe-Michael and I manage to find the right route which will lead us to our hotel in the Shinjuku district. We make it and the madness begins! We emerge from the station to see the fiery hustle and bustle of the city, afterall it *was* a Saturday night in Tokyo and the night of the city was alive! Relatively shocked of the ants crowding the streets in the recognizable moments and familiarity- we try to search through them for our hotel. We were lost and we know how to ask nothing yet in Japanese-so no one was of help. Then a "sweet" man approached Michael, welcoming him to Japan and then within moments tried asking for money. Hmph. Clever beggar.
Blog return
Oops...Looks like I have put no use to this blog thus far. Let me explain myself though! Being in Japan I had two choices: sit in the hotel and blog or be out in that freaking country and experience every second that I possibly could. Naturally, I chose the latter. THEN, upon the day of our return I told Michael that I was feeling sort of ill and that I believe I was going to get sick (boy was that an understatement). During the extensive 11 hour plane ride, next to an annoying ex-teacher that complained to the lady to the left of him about how the students teased him and called him monkey behind his back and made hooting monkey noises at him, I progressively got worse and was suffering from insomnia. THEN we reach Portland, delirious and drunk with a buzzing yearning for the country we left and the country we just arrived in, we decided to eat breakfast at the Rogue restaurant in the airport...mmm-twas good. We met an amazing professor named Michael whom teaches at Guam and a morning chitchat morphed into a 3 hour dialogue. We make it back home and managed to stay awake for several more hours entertaining Shirley, Michael's mom, about our trip and thanking her for the "remodeling" she has done. The next morning was real hell. I woke up emitting a deep growl from my chest that some would call a "cough", oozing orifices, aches and pains and the whole lot of badness. Michael saw how shitty I was feeling and decided to leave me alone about searching for a job (which recently has resumed) and I went to bed. Strangely and awkwardly, I slept and slept and the next thing I know I wake up and it's Friday. Imagine my concern: I went to bed one day and it was Wednesday and I wake up the next day and it's Friday...phew-I was sick. I have been strongly battling this Godforsaken Jap illness ever since...even this minute I just took a moment to blow my nose. Not to mention the insomnia isn't helping...what the bloody hell is up with that? You'd think I would've written a while back since it isn't like I'm sleeping-but I just lay in bed praying that eventually the sleepy sheeps will come and make my head go dead.
So that was the long version of an excuse as to why I haven't posted anything since Japan. I was sick and worn out. Oh, and I've been filming since Monday as well-so hmph!
So that was the long version of an excuse as to why I haven't posted anything since Japan. I was sick and worn out. Oh, and I've been filming since Monday as well-so hmph!
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Writings on the train ride 6/18
Music in the ears and lip flesh between my teeth, I reflect on the last four days here in this strange country. I rest beside Michael as he feverishly writes his take in the trip thus far. I'm hesitant to write because I am more interested in blogging it all when we make it back to Tokyo-but we've slacked off on it this far...
Being here makes me feel inept in so many ways! Not artistic enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough or motivated enough (these people have so much energy to be all of this!)...I realize we are so fortunate living in the U.S. in many ways. I of course know this, but going to other countries merely reminds me. Do you know that their phone bill for cells are ~$400?! Many people we met have no computer and don't know the term email...Sure-in vanity wise the U.S. is more triumphant, but Japan reigns in modesty (besides their fashion and technology...) in culture, history and scenery. The people are super nice too-some are just too bashful to speak English (and many don't know English surprisingly...)
I wish I could convey how beautiful it looks outside. This fog is translucently thick and kissing the canopy of trees. I can feel the moisture within the air even within this trains' compartment. It's quiet and calm outdoors and even indoors-the only sounds I hear are the musical influences projecting from my earphones, the sounds of our pens etching ink onto the noto, shuffling bodies within their seats and the whooshing wind rolling off the tumbling train down the engraved rail tracks. Okay...so it may seem noisy-but it isn't.
We're heading back to Tokyo for our money. Michael didn't bring all of our money for our backpacking expenditure and we are dangerously low...so we must return to the four hour speed racer of a train back to our fancy hotel-chill out for the night in our hotel and then our plan is to leave bright and early tomorrow for Kyoto, Nara and Hiroshima and some how/ some where sleep.
We've had a lot of great food thus far-but I have been feeling rather heavy lately and I believe it's from all the meat I've been consuming. I feel rather drabby so we're going to google for veggie houses.
God! I feel like we've done so much (which is absolutely true) and that it would take forever to recap it! I'm going to try, though.
Being here makes me feel inept in so many ways! Not artistic enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough or motivated enough (these people have so much energy to be all of this!)...I realize we are so fortunate living in the U.S. in many ways. I of course know this, but going to other countries merely reminds me. Do you know that their phone bill for cells are ~$400?! Many people we met have no computer and don't know the term email...Sure-in vanity wise the U.S. is more triumphant, but Japan reigns in modesty (besides their fashion and technology...) in culture, history and scenery. The people are super nice too-some are just too bashful to speak English (and many don't know English surprisingly...)
I wish I could convey how beautiful it looks outside. This fog is translucently thick and kissing the canopy of trees. I can feel the moisture within the air even within this trains' compartment. It's quiet and calm outdoors and even indoors-the only sounds I hear are the musical influences projecting from my earphones, the sounds of our pens etching ink onto the noto, shuffling bodies within their seats and the whooshing wind rolling off the tumbling train down the engraved rail tracks. Okay...so it may seem noisy-but it isn't.
We're heading back to Tokyo for our money. Michael didn't bring all of our money for our backpacking expenditure and we are dangerously low...so we must return to the four hour speed racer of a train back to our fancy hotel-chill out for the night in our hotel and then our plan is to leave bright and early tomorrow for Kyoto, Nara and Hiroshima and some how/ some where sleep.
We've had a lot of great food thus far-but I have been feeling rather heavy lately and I believe it's from all the meat I've been consuming. I feel rather drabby so we're going to google for veggie houses.
God! I feel like we've done so much (which is absolutely true) and that it would take forever to recap it! I'm going to try, though.
Japan intro
Greetings my friends! This is a blog site I decided to create to post all of my rants, trips, photos and whatnots. Currently I am in Japan-so my tidbits will be on this topic...enjoy!
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