Arriving in Japan

I'm mooving away from England!!!

I arrived in Narita Tokyo at 8:02pm on Saturday 27^th September. Having pre-booked a rental mobile phone in advance, I had 58 minutes to clear immigration and customs before the mobile phone rental office shut. At both immigration and customs, the officials were all very official until I responded to their questions in Japanese – suddenly they were very welcoming and wishing me an excellent time in Japan. Thankfully, I got to the mobile phone rental office two minutes before it shut! Thinking about it, I reckon that if I hadn't spoken any Japanese whilst clearing immigration and customs; the process might have taken a few more minutes; so in my mind, picking up the mobile phone at Narita saved me from having to take two 40 minute train journeys the following day. Getting from Narita to Chiba was pretty straight forward, again, by speaking a little Japanese it was just that little bit more reassuring to know I was heading in the right direction (also reminded me of walking around googlemaps on the Add1Challenge) ... or at least, smiled to myself thinking, 'yep, that practice is paying me back with interest!'

So I got to Chiba, came up the escalator and for just a few moments, I felt like I was in the film Blade Runner. It was literally overwhelming to the senses; neon kanji in every direction, an ocean of busy Japanese salarymen and waves of fashionable teens cheerily giggling and chatting simultaneously on their mobile phones and their peers. And there I was, dripping with sweat on account of wearing my heaviest winter clothes to save a couple of kilos on my baggage allowance. I somehow managed to be about 3kg's overweight on my main suitcase, slightly overweight on my cabin case and I was carrying enough electronics in my 'laptop case' to shutdown Heathrow security for a bank holiday weekend! I couldn't get my bearings at all; so for a couple of minutes I sat down and hunted around for my map. In two minutes, I must have had a dozen Japanese glances of “should I help this poor gaijin (foreigner) out, or would be an insult? ... oh I don't know, I will help if he asks ... even if he speaks English ... but he has to ask ... oh, but maybe he doesn't want to be a nuisance ... only he shouldn't think that, I want to help him out ... oh what a dilemma ...” I kept smiling and saying, “daijoubu da” (I'm fine).

Eventually, having studied the map for a few minutes, I was still perplexed. So I fired my flare gun expression, “sumimasen ...” (excuse me) ... and rather than just pointing me in the right direction, this Japanese guy (Yoshi) walked and talked with me, popping into a Family Mart to ask the shop assistant if he knew where this mysterious hotel was located! That made me feel slightly less of a nuisance; because hey, I'm a lost little foreign Johnny and here was a native Chiba-ian equally confused as to where the hotel was. Mind you, apart from 'love hotels', why would a local know the location of all the hotels in a city!!?

Anyway, the Family Mart assistant pointed us towards the hotel and suddenly, it was glaring out of the street saying, “Yeah, don't you feel like a pair of idiots ... I was here all the time and you've basically walked a big circle around me!” So, I thanked my rescuer and was soon in a lovely hotel bedroom. That lasted for about two minutes as I was hungry and thirsty; so off to the Family Mart I went to buy familiar Japanese snacks; Strawberry flavoured Koara Machi! (for those uninitiated with such things; these are little Koala shaped biscuits filled with a sort of strawberry angel delight-ish filling). I sat outside the Family Mart thinking; “I could probably live quite happily on Koala March”; but that wouldn't be very adventurous now would it!