Apparently I have run out of time. More later.

Inzai Makinohara, Chiba

I stayed in Chiba (a prefecture east of Tokyo megalopolis) for about three days. It was quite an adventure, because I was due to arrive at Inzai Makinohara station at about 2pm and Terumi was not due to arrive back home until after 6pm, so her mother was coming to fetch me. Note, her mother speaks only the most basic of English, and my Japanese was poor at best, but we managed to communicate fairly effectively... with a lot of pained expressions and awkward silences though.

Day one, fairly uneventful. Terumi's son was very excited to see me, and couldnt really control himself, so being that his understanding of the concept of jet lag is fairly weak, he woke me up whenever he felt suitable.

Day two, interesting. We went shopping for a futon (I wanted one) but found nothing suitable. I spent the day with Terumi's mother again, but this time we were a lot more relaxed. Was introduced to all her mother's friends though, which was a bit taxing. Was glad to get some sleep.

Day three, hilarious. Terumi took the day off, so we went shopping. She was laughing so much when I phoned my sister and woke her up at 4am in the morning and then got Terumi to speak to her. I bought a portable Jap-Eng dictionary, which doubles as an mp3 player. Wonderful little device... havent even figured out all the functions yet, but already attached to it. In the evening, we went to visit Nippon Medical School, and saw some of the professors I had not seen for the past two years. One took us out to a sumptuous feast and viciously shoved japanese alcohol down our unwilling throats (!). It was not sake, but shochu... a sort of japanese vodka if you will. You have to dilute it, or as I learnt in Kyoto, you will get faceless after a glass. Yes, it really is badass. Made from potatoes, I believe. We staggered back and forth around Tokyo after that, and had to make a rather interesting toilet stop... Japanese traditional toilets are effectively fancy shaped holes in the ground, so you squat over them and pee. Very difficult when you are smashed and have no idea what you are doing. Not to mention that I am rather large and the rooms are designed for the average 18th century japanese person. Needless to say there was much handwashing post-micturition, and several giggles from adjacent toilets for several minutes after.

Day four, a fond farewell. Terumi took me to the station and bid me farewell, thinking that I was going to Kyoto. However, after some hunting on the internet, I realised I had misdated my booking, and had nowhere to stay for the following two days. I thought about just going anyway, but eventually settled on staying in Asakusa, a part of Tokyo. It was to be one of the defining moments of my trip.

Well, unfortunately I am already back in Dubai airport, so I am going to have to write about this trip retrospectively.

Arriving in Tokyo

After what can only be described as a 24hours of hard earned debauchery, and chance meetings with various random people on our way to fetch my visa in Pretoria, it was time to leave for Japan. The only hiccup thus far was that I had left my ATM card at Ashlin's place, but otherwise, I was there two hours early as stipulated, believe it or not!

The flight itself was pretty uneventful other than that Emirates is very comfy! I arrived in Dubai, buggered around for an hour, and flew to Kansai Airport. (Refer to later post for more details about Kansai Airport) Now, the stupid tossers gave me less than an hour to go through immigration, find my luggage, find my way to domestic departures (mind you this is Japan, nothing is simple) and I managed to arrive just in time to find that my flight to Tokyo had already left. I had to beg and plead to get them to put me on the next plane, which they did quite gladly after hearing my feeble attempts at begging in Japanese.

I arrived in Tokyo at about 11pm, which meant I had to blindly grab the last train leaving the station, and had no idea where I was going until I arrived at a station I recognised. I was due to spend the night with my friend Terumi in Chiba, but it was too late for me to travel there. I travelled as far as Ueno station, and was told I could go no further.

So I went outside for an illicit cigarette after having bought bucket loads at the Duty free in Dubai, and lo and behold there were two foreign guys sitting outside. Mind you, Ueno station in itself is a Japanese anomaly. It is the place to go if you want to see homeless people in Japan. The train station exit is lined by neatly laid out cardboard boxes, which you must definitely trip over if you want to wake the raging bum lying inside. Interestingly, these people take off their shoes when they sleep. Anyway, back to the foreign guys. One was French, the other German, and both were drunk out of their brackets and intending to spend the night awake because they had no alarm clock! They very kindly offered to help me find a place to stay, so we walked around the streets of Ueno at 2am in the morning looking for a place to stay.

We eventually found one, and I bid them farewell. I had arrived in Tokyo.

I once heard a wise person say there is something magic about three am.

Now I realise that I'm the wise person, and I'm telling you that the magic hour is in fact half past four am. It's around about the time when your brain realises - if you are unfortunate enough to still be awake - that it is in fact supposed to be asleep and attempts to rapidly revert to this more primitive state of existance.

And right now, it's 4:40am Japan time.

I do - as always - have a good number of things to say... one of my current pet peeves being that the keyboard is labelled like a japanese keyboard but wired like a western one, and as such I cannot find ANY of the punctuation marks I want to use unless I touch type... which is bloody dangerous because if it switches to writing japanese there is basically no way of reverting to english text... so excuse the misplaces ellipses and grossly exaggerated sentence length.

But for now I leave you all with the knowledge that it is in fact four thirty that is the magic hour. If your sorry ass can last that long.