With all four of us now thoroughly tired and having only the
faintest idea of how to get to our hotel on the opposite side of one of the
world's largest cities we started marching around the airport and evaluating
our transportation options. Eventually,
Peter (much larger brain than I) found a lineup for something called the
"Narita Express" which is a train that takes you into the main station
in the heart of the city. While we
managed to navigate that first train with relative ease, things quickly
spiraled out of control from there.
After trying to figure out on our own how to get to Hachioji (the suburb where our hotel was located), we
quickly grew frustrated and started asking around. We were assured by a nice employee of the
train line that we were getting on the right train, but not being at all
familiar with the transit system or knowing where we were going led to some
lingering doubts. Factor in that the
four of us were all lugging around large suitcases plus an assortment of
backpacks and purses and you my friend have yourself a high stress
situation. Future warning for anyone going to Tokyo: Make sure you at least have a
rough idea of how to get to your hotel if using public transit. Tokyo holds the record for the largest and
most complex city rail system in the world. It truly is overwhelming!
Once on the train, we settled in and were quickly
transported to our stop... NOT! Instead of listening to the broken English of
the helpful gentleman at the train station who told us the train we were
boarding was going to our stop, we started to have doubts and after about half
an hour on the train we got off at some random station and looked at the
subway/train map. We proceeded to do
this numerous times over the course of a couple of hours, and by the end I
could see that my mother and girlfriend were ready to kill me. Looking back, I have no idea why wouldn't
just listen to the railway employee, but I will blame my poor judgment on jet
lag. Yes, it was jet lag that made me do it! Somehow, almost 4(!) hours after
landing at Narita, we took what should have been a fairly routine train ride to
a suburban Tokyo outpost and turned it into one hell of a stressful beginning
to a vacation. One of the funny things
about the whole process was that it took that long with FOUR of us
While we did not get to take in any of the official sights
on our first day, our numerous train rides did lead us to see something that
the Japanese are known for: a drunk businessman on the train who was stumbling
around and harassing everyone. Generally
regarded as one of the safest countries in the world from a crime perspective,
this is oddly enough one of the "dangers" they warn you about in the
travel guides. If the drunk people in
Inuvik were as friendly as the railway drunks in Tokyo, I would have a lot less
headaches in my life.
Upon emerging from the mail/rail station that our hotel was
named after, we quickly gave up on the notion of walking to our hotel in the
rain and hailed a cab. We felt kind of
foolish when we realized that our hotel was right around the corner, but after
over 20 hours in transit, we just wanted a place to rest our heads. And what a place it was! With my mom now
quite agitated and all of us getting cranky and tired, we were handed the keys
to our two rooms on the 12th floor. As
soon as these were presented to me, I knew it was not going to go over well
with my mother. For one, we had
specifically asked for rooms on low floors when we booked, and two, they
informed me that the stairs were for emergency use only. This quickly led to my mom getting extremely
pissed off and proclaiming that she could not get in the elevator and we would
have to find somewhere else to stay.
After some more gentle arguing/talking with the hotel front desk, we
were told that we were shit-out-of-luck and there was nothing we could do. My mother, God bless her heart, finally made
it up the elevator with some gentle persuasion and reassurances from the rest
of us, but in the true spirit of the day this was only the beginning of our
claustrophobia issues. Walking into our rooms, we were greeted by
the smallest hotel rooms I have ever seen.
The "double beds" were only slightly larger than one of those
children's racecar beds. The bathrooms were roughly the same size as your average
airplane shitter, and just to push my mother's claustrophobia into a full-scale
panic attack, none of the windows were able to open. All I can say is that first night I sure am
glad I was shacked up with Peter the Pork Chop and my girlfriend was with my
mother!
Eventually my mom did calm down and we were all able to go
out to McDonald's for our first taste of Japanese cuisine. This was followed by what would be one of
many trips to 7/11 to stock up on some booze for hotel room consumption. The four of us spent the rest of the evening
unwinding and taking in the most fabulous of sights: the Japanese toilet. Having seen bidets before, I must confess I
have never seen anything quite like a Japanese one. Our toilet came equipped with a whole slew of
buttons and a robotic, moving arm that sprays a fountain of water up your ass
if you so desire. Peter and I proceeded
to test it out by spraying water across the bathroom and laughing like little
kids. Yes, the Asian leg of my 100 day
vacation was officially underway!
~Brentski~
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