Jermz in Japan
ohayo gozainasu mina-san. Jeremy desu,
The time in Japan is 4:57am June 15, ２００５．
I really don't know why I am actually awake right now, but I feel really refreshed and awake right now! Everything on both ends of the flight went so smooth and quickly. We had gotten through the LAX and Narita airport termianals in less than 30 minutes each. Once we had gotten our luggage, we found the Japan Rail Pass exchange station and got our passes. By this time it was around 1830 local time and I needed to call Hibari House to let them know that we will be arriving after 2000 (I am having trouble with this keyboard so I can't find certain punctuation marks). We some one picked up on the other side, he answered in Japanese. This was the first time I got to use the magic phrase "Eigo go wakarimasu ka" and suddenly eveything became english.
The next challenge was trying to take local trains to get to where I was staying. According to the map I was given, I would need to change trains 3 times to get to the closest station. I asked the gate person at the JR station where I could find the first train and found the first person I had talked to in Japan that didn't speak english. Fortunatly, I spoke enough Japanese to ask and he simplified his Japanese enough for me to understand, so it worked out. Once we got to the correct station, which wasn't the JR station that I came from, Ralph and I stood, scratching our heads, in front of a giant kiosk littered with Japanese. I allowed someone to go ahead of me so that I could watch what they were doing, but instead, this nice couple helped us buy our tickets. It was at this point that I decided that I love Japan. Everyone I had met was so nice and willing to help. We boarded the second train to our first stop and had to transfer to a JR train. We had thought that we needed to get another ticket, but the gate person told us that we could use our tickets that we had bought at Narita. We boarded the correct train and got to our third transfer. We did the same thing as before and boarded the train a few minutes after arriving. This one had its routes posted on an electronic screen. After 3 stops, we realize that this isn´t the right train and get off at the next stop. We take the stairs to the street level and find at least three different signs with the same train line that we are supposed to be riding on. We get to one of them and find out that it's the same train that we had just gotten off from, except headed in the opposite direction. Fortunatly, this turned out to be the correct train. Our final transfer required us to buy another ticket, but we could now figure out the kiosk thanks to those people we had met earlier. We exit this train at Hibarigaoka station and begin yet another journey.
By now it is 2120 and we use the closest payphone to call Hibaru house again. This time I used 10yen instead of 100yen and got the same result. According to our map, it would take only 12 minutes by foot to reach the house. We started walking down the alleys for a little bit and soon realize that they are acutally streets. So I asked Ralph how people know which way to go down these one way streets. However these were actually two way streets and there is barely any way for 2 cars to get through. Another thing we discovered is that there is no such thing as a straight street. All of the streets curve and weaving into each other more like the root system of a tree than a organized road system. We asked a lady nearby if she knew how to get to the Hibari house and showed her the map and picture of the location, but she didn't know. We set out on our own again and spot some landmarks such as Game Fantasia and AM PM. Then we make a turn as the map indicated and couldn´t find the house. We asked a shop owner and he showed us that we were on the wrong street, but if we made a right past a CD store, we'd be on the correct street. We thanked him and set off again. We did as we were told and found that we were on one of the correct streets because we spotted the 7-11. So we had gone a little out of the way, but we felt that we were close. What fools we were. We resumed our journey according to the map. We went down a street with a bunch of houses, but they aren't like in America where they are all in a row. It seemed as if they were placed anywhere people felt like and then paved in between all of them. Each of the houses seemed exactly the same and all of the vending machines were copied and pasted here and there to confuse us. We got to a street and turned back towards the 7-11. We took another road from the 7-11 as the map seemingly shows. We got about a block down the road and found a dead end, a one way street and a cabbage patch in someone's yard. So we continued to walked further, gave up and returned to 7-11. Keep in mind that we have these massive bags on our shoulders the entire time. It felt as if we were training for something. We decided that perhaps, we misinterpreted the shop keeper's message and went back to the CD store. When we got lost again, we asked a passerby and a taxi driver and both had no idea where to go. They said the map was confusing and one thought that it wasn't a map of this area. Finally, we find some people in a small drink store that brought out a large map and found the place for us with specific directions. We followed those and arrived at Hibari House at 2430. We both took some well needed showers, paid rent and passed out.
This morning, I looked out the window to the bathroom and to my suprise I saw the large cabbage patch that we had passed last night.
