飛行機友

Leaving and arriving

Much time has passed since I first learned that Tokyo existed and on the day of Sunday the 1st September I left my house for the last time for a long time.

Bye Bye house

I had all my stuff packed and ready to go for my practice year abroad (the premier inn next to Heathrow) The night there was OK even if the staff were obviously all grinning robots whos' enthusiasm dial had not been limited and apparently the best time paint all the main corridor walls is just as I and many others were checking in.






So it was onwards and upwards (literally). At around lunchtime I got to the airport and got charged £40 for having heavy luggage. I then got randomly selected for both frisking and shoe x-ray, which was massively inconvenient due to wearing converse. So after much hopping and shoe wrestling the security woman asked me "do you have anything sharp on you?" and I watched the sad deepening of her eyes, the eyes of a woman who has heard something so many times as I replied "only my wit" (and chuckled to myself).



After this there was no delays and I got a BIG-TEA and amused myself for 20 minutes by watching people run for the connecting shuttle that arrives every 2 minutes like it was the last train in existence. I then chucked myself onto a plane and took off without delay.

Journey time

Although many of you know I don't like flying, the plane ride actually ok :) The person who was lucky enough to be meant to be sitting next to me missed their chance for awesome conversation by not boarding the plane. The upside of this was that I could splay out over two seats while watching a variety of space and ocean related movies and documentaries. WOO sharks and planets. The spare seat also had another benefit, it meant that Pamilo could really relax and enjoy the flight too!

Pamilo and his new buddy

You can see there my flight friend with whom I had my first Japanese conversation about world war 2 bombers and David Beckham. Needless to say I did not have the vocabulary for that but it did mean i got to use the word 空爆 (air strike) multiple times, who knew that would be useful!

Arriving

外人card and train ticket

Ok, I was dead. In fact i'm still dead. I didn't manage to sleep on the plane so when I got off, it was like continuing the same very long day. The immigration staff didn't help move my day along either, they instead passed me along desk to desk with each new officer saying "study!?!?!" in a confused and somewhat horrified voice before sending me to the next guy along. After finally being cleared immigration by the oldest man I have ever seen I did get some karma rebound as my bags both instantly appeared together on the luggage belt and I gladly pranced through the irritable crowd of people waiting for bags and got my bags and left.

So as you can see on the picture, I took the Narita express to Shinjuku an this is where the annoyance began. Maybe I should not have pranced so gleefully at the baggage carousel.... I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. The need of a wee was calling but I was also extremely thirsty. I manage to solve thing but because I had clicked the "any seat is ok" button when buying my train ticket I was in the very last carriage of the train and this meant the bathroom swayed almost sinking titanic flinging all my spare change English and japanese all over the floor.

To make matters worse, upon arriving at Shinjuku station I was faced with this:

NOOOOOOO

The construction around the station meant there was 3 down escalators but no up.... so I started going up the stairs very slowly when was ok as a dude coming down to the station helped me carry my bag :) However this set lack of convenience the style for the rest of the stations. So after getting to ground level I wandered around for over 20 minutes trying to locate my connecting station and when I finally located it there was no lift and around 5 stories of stairs. So I gave up and got a taxi.

box!

<------ Now i'm in a box.