12/31/2005
Japan trip, the week so far
26th Dec 2005
I had a terrible flight. I caught a cold just before leaving Australia and so the pressure in my ears was all fucked up. It still hasn't come right now. After 12 hours on the plane, I got my visa, and had to open up my bags at customs. The dude asked me if I was carrying any drugs, weapons or porno to which I said no. He seemed very interested in some diarreah medecine I had, and called out something to which about 5 or 6 other dudes responded by coming over and standing around near me. So after a bit this other dude comes over and asks me to please go with him to another room. Uh-oh. He leads and another dude follows behind me, I guess to make sure I don't try to do a runner.
We get in this room and he shows me this book with photos of weed, mushrooms, pills etc and asks me if I'm carrying any of these or if someone asked me to carry them. Nope. He searches me (no glove thank christ). Then we take out everything from my suitcase and examine it in great detail. I've got a cold so I'm carrying a lot of medication, so this takes quite some time. Eventually he asks me if I've swallowed anything, nope. This other dude comes in the room and questions me about the diareagh medicine, where did I get it, why do I need it etc. After a bit of this, the other guy asks me to sign a form giving my permission to do an xray of my stomache, to make sure I didn't swallow anything in a condomn. After I do this they let me go, with the explanation that because I was carrying diareah medecine, they suspected me of trying to smuggle drugs in my intestinal tract. I didn't bother explaining that the medecine was to *stop* diareah, not cause it.
I take the last train from the airport and get to my hotel, exausted.
25th Dec 2005
Yayoi shows me around Tokyo. It's a fucking MASSIVE place. At basically any time you like, you can walk out on the street and there'll be people walking around. It's clean too, compared to Sydney anyway.
We catch a train to Tokyo station (I think) and head to Tokyo tower. On the way we pass a shrine with heaps of little statues that represent the spirits of still born babies. Tokyo tower is 333 (that number again) metres tall and gives a great view. 
I can even see a hazy outline of Fuji-san which gives the whole thing an even more "I'm so huge" vibe about it.
Next stop is Akihabara, electric town where you can buy any sort of electronic items pretty cheaply. I should mention here that Tokyo must be a really expensive city to live in. I guess that's stating the obvious but I was actually suckered in for a while because of the currency. In Australia, our coins go up to $2 and you can easily tell $1 and $2 coins because they're gold and have weight. ￥100 is about the size and weight of our 10 cent coin, so without really thinking about it I'd buy something for a few hundred yen and not really consider the price. Add that to the list of stupid things I've done in my life. Ciggarettes are really cheap though. ￥300 a pack makes the $10 per pack in Australia seem ludicrous. Anyway, in Akihabara I was introduced to vending machines selling little action figures, cats, models of these anime chicks in skimpy dresses and big tits, gameboy games, miniture rubic cubes, etc etc. Japan is very big on vending machines.
Hot/cold coffee, beer, smokes, but strangely enough no snacks. I haven't seen a vending machine selling snacks anywhere, but for coffee, tea, sports drinks and ciggaretes they are everywhere. Another thing I noted as interesting was the payment system in small restaurants. You actually order and pay for what you want before you go in using a vending machine that gives you a token to give to the waiter. I dunno what the advantage of that is.
A girl dressed in a maid uniform handed me a flyer for a "maid cafe". We passed it but Yayoi didn't wanna go inside. I'll try it when I get back to Tokyo.
After this we head to Odaiba which is the site of the largest Ferris wheel in the world, apparently. We take a ride but it's not really my thing. What *was* my thing was the video game arcade we went into after. Huge, again. And they had stuff I'd never seen before in a game. 
Tokyo bus driver, Super mario cart arcade, power shovel operator, a mountain bike game. Hilarous stuff. 
I also tried Panchinko but found it a bit dissapointing, I thought there would be a bit more skill involved. I guess I didn't really understand what was going on as well so shouldn't be so quick to diss. Slot machines were a bit better, but pretty hard. It reminded me of the casino games in leisure suit larry (the CGA version).
To get to Odaiba you can take the monorail. The trip lasts around 45 minutes and you get to see a good view of the city and harbour. On the way back we got the first carriage and I discovered that it's fully automatic. There's no driver driving the train.
More later, I'm currently in Kanazawa at Kana chan's place, have to Osaka wo densha de ni ikimasu..
I had a terrible flight. I caught a cold just before leaving Australia and so the pressure in my ears was all fucked up. It still hasn't come right now. After 12 hours on the plane, I got my visa, and had to open up my bags at customs. The dude asked me if I was carrying any drugs, weapons or porno to which I said no. He seemed very interested in some diarreah medecine I had, and called out something to which about 5 or 6 other dudes responded by coming over and standing around near me. So after a bit this other dude comes over and asks me to please go with him to another room. Uh-oh. He leads and another dude follows behind me, I guess to make sure I don't try to do a runner.
We get in this room and he shows me this book with photos of weed, mushrooms, pills etc and asks me if I'm carrying any of these or if someone asked me to carry them. Nope. He searches me (no glove thank christ). Then we take out everything from my suitcase and examine it in great detail. I've got a cold so I'm carrying a lot of medication, so this takes quite some time. Eventually he asks me if I've swallowed anything, nope. This other dude comes in the room and questions me about the diareagh medicine, where did I get it, why do I need it etc. After a bit of this, the other guy asks me to sign a form giving my permission to do an xray of my stomache, to make sure I didn't swallow anything in a condomn. After I do this they let me go, with the explanation that because I was carrying diareah medecine, they suspected me of trying to smuggle drugs in my intestinal tract. I didn't bother explaining that the medecine was to *stop* diareah, not cause it.
I take the last train from the airport and get to my hotel, exausted.
25th Dec 2005
Yayoi shows me around Tokyo. It's a fucking MASSIVE place. At basically any time you like, you can walk out on the street and there'll be people walking around. It's clean too, compared to Sydney anyway.
We catch a train to Tokyo station (I think) and head to Tokyo tower. On the way we pass a shrine with heaps of little statues that represent the spirits of still born babies. Tokyo tower is 333 (that number again) metres tall and gives a great view. I can even see a hazy outline of Fuji-san which gives the whole thing an even more "I'm so huge" vibe about it.Next stop is Akihabara, electric town where you can buy any sort of electronic items pretty cheaply. I should mention here that Tokyo must be a really expensive city to live in. I guess that's stating the obvious but I was actually suckered in for a while because of the currency. In Australia, our coins go up to $2 and you can easily tell $1 and $2 coins because they're gold and have weight. ￥100 is about the size and weight of our 10 cent coin, so without really thinking about it I'd buy something for a few hundred yen and not really consider the price. Add that to the list of stupid things I've done in my life. Ciggarettes are really cheap though. ￥300 a pack makes the $10 per pack in Australia seem ludicrous. Anyway, in Akihabara I was introduced to vending machines selling little action figures, cats, models of these anime chicks in skimpy dresses and big tits, gameboy games, miniture rubic cubes, etc etc. Japan is very big on vending machines.
Hot/cold coffee, beer, smokes, but strangely enough no snacks. I haven't seen a vending machine selling snacks anywhere, but for coffee, tea, sports drinks and ciggaretes they are everywhere. Another thing I noted as interesting was the payment system in small restaurants. You actually order and pay for what you want before you go in using a vending machine that gives you a token to give to the waiter. I dunno what the advantage of that is.A girl dressed in a maid uniform handed me a flyer for a "maid cafe". We passed it but Yayoi didn't wanna go inside. I'll try it when I get back to Tokyo.
After this we head to Odaiba which is the site of the largest Ferris wheel in the world, apparently. We take a ride but it's not really my thing. What *was* my thing was the video game arcade we went into after. Huge, again. And they had stuff I'd never seen before in a game. Tokyo bus driver, Super mario cart arcade, power shovel operator, a mountain bike game. Hilarous stuff. I also tried Panchinko but found it a bit dissapointing, I thought there would be a bit more skill involved. I guess I didn't really understand what was going on as well so shouldn't be so quick to diss. Slot machines were a bit better, but pretty hard. It reminded me of the casino games in leisure suit larry (the CGA version).To get to Odaiba you can take the monorail. The trip lasts around 45 minutes and you get to see a good view of the city and harbour. On the way back we got the first carriage and I discovered that it's fully automatic. There's no driver driving the train.
More later, I'm currently in Kanazawa at Kana chan's place, have to Osaka wo densha de ni ikimasu..
posted by nascent at 12/31/2005 11:55:00 pm
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