Day 1 – Sleepless sashay [4th April 2009]

Now on JST! I had not been furnished with headphones for the seat-back display and asking a flight attendant proved fruitless, thankfully the films were either too lengthy or heavy going to be of interest (Australia by Baz Luhrmann, Changeling by Clint Eastwood) or were kid orientated (Bolt, Madagascar 2, The Incredibles) so it wasn’t too much of a loss. Unfortunately sitting in cattle class meant the films weren’t even video-on-demand and were more “tune in half way through” which meant watching more than a couple of films was protracted at best.

The passenger seated next to me was a child I had originally assumed was Japanese given his Japanese mother (who kept “thanking me very much” when I helped her with her bag, moved to let her use the bathroom, etc.); however it seemed that he was part Japanese, part German – given that he opted to watch films in German rather than Japanese. From what I could glean he was a member of a band, with others seated behind him who flitted back and forth between English and German. I did learn a nubmer of Japanese phrases from him though, especially from his interactions with his mother. With a young child sitting nearby I felt awkward reading FHM so spent the majority of the flight playing on my Nintendo DS (Kirby Power Paintbrush and Puzzle Quest for the most part) and slowing my brain down to a level where even boredom was too much effort – fractured snoozing usually followed.

Landed in NRT shortly before 9am local time, equating to crazy time for my body as it had now shifted into that polyphasic, eat-when-you-can survival mode that so often happens to me on trips. Bearing in mind what shio had said about That Narita Smell (Smells like Narita Spirit?), I waited bleary eyed for my rucksack at the luggage carousel. Each bag that trundled by and wasn’t mine made me run through everything possible that could have gone wrong: still at Manchester, still at Copenhagen, split on the plane (my underpants!), held back for searching, lost in transit… The list went on. Running on empty, I shouldered by bag and trundled through customs with a smile and a nod at the bespectacled uniform behind the counter. Tom – the tour leader – met me in the arrivals lounge brandishing an Inside Japan Tours logo; my first impressions included how young he looked and how quiet he seemed. Met up with two other tour members – Tara and Wendy, daughter and mother – whom I tried to make small talk with despite my brain having problems correctly ordering simple words.

Wandering down to the familiar Narita transport terminal, Tom took us into a queue for the JR office to get our JR Passes for the tour. Despite the length of the line the row of attendants were smart, cordial, efficient and swift: effortlessly ordering the myriad of papers and staccato rubber stamping. Escaping the heat of the terminal we all jumped onto a Skyliner train to Ueno station which would take – according to the board – seventy one minutes to reach our destination. Seventy one minutes and much scenery watching later we disembarked and stood gormless in the throng of Ueno on a Saturday. Tom and I had chatted on the train, mostly about my previous trip to Japan with IJT and what I would be doing for the rest of the day. Bundling Wendy, Tara and myself into a taxi, Tom uttered something in fluent Japanese to the driver and bid us farewell – he needed to return to the airport to escort other tour members.

A short drive later we were at our hotel, and after a bit of passport handling by the clerks at the plush looking front desk, we were all allowed to go to our rooms despite being only shortly before midday. I felt a slight pang having been the only one of the trio to have paid for anytime check-in but the welcoming comfort of a cool, quiet room washed that instantly away. After fiddling excitedly with anything that had buttons, I showered and shaved and began to feel slightly more human despite the cotton wool growing around my senses. Pulling myself away from the inviting embrace of the bed, I headed out of the hotel and towards the main Asakusa strip that Tom had recommended to me on the train journey over. I was determined to overcome my ridiculous fear of going into a Japanese restaurant solo and made a beeline for the first one I saw: a regular Tonkatsu restaurant. While waiting for my food an elderly lady sitting next to me kept speaking to me in English, only some of which I could make out. She seemed to be eating a huge meal for someone of her size which was strangely gratifying to see. My stomach meanwhile had been having a fit since the midpoint of the plane journey, thankfully some meat, rice and orange juice quelled it for a spell. Heading back to the hotel to pick up some items, I met a couple of English speaking tourists who chatted briefly with me about their recent trip to Takayama which I knew I would be visiting soon enough.

Having not been to Ginza on my previous trip, that was my goal for the afternoon which meant navigating the Tokyo subway system again. After criss-crossing the road, I finally found an entrance to the station which, I would only find out tomorrow, was thankfully the correct one for the direction I wanted to travel. Tom had furnished group members with PASMO cards (functionally equivalent to the Oyster cards in London and likely every other major metropolitan transport network) which I dutifully stuffed up using and had to speak to a station attendant at Ginza station. Thankfully he just fiddled with my card and waved me through – a common reaction to foreigners I would find out.

Perhaps a symptom of my tiredness or just generally bad direction sense, I spent a large part of the afternoon aimlessly wandering around the part-pedestrianised Ginza area, occasionally looking at my Lonely Planet guide and trying to scry where the Sony Building was. Feeling suitably out of place amongst shops like Hermes, Prada and the like, I poked around a couple of music stores before finally finding the elusive Sony Centre. Greeted almost instantly by a bank of their high definition sets (Bravia, 40 inches and up), I realised they were the first HD televisions which had actually wowed me with their picture quality. Perhaps flattered by the source, there was none of the artifacting or smeariness I usually associate with HD TVs. Wandering the several interconnected floors and playing with various audio/visual paraphernalia, I did a couple of circuits before leaving – though not before watching a music video of YUI on one of the many large screens.

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Deciding to leave Ginza and have a gander at Ueno Park, I managed to utilise the subway without incident this time only to get the the park at what was likely its busiest time. Throngs of people swarmed every square metre of the park snapping pictures of the cherry blossoms, squatting on the endless kilometers of blue tarpaulin or drinking and talking loudly. At first I didn’t think I’d stay long – crowds were certainly not high on my list of favourites, especially while jetlagged – but after a scant few minutes wandering the park, I began to understand why hanami is such a celebrated time. Despite the crowds, nobody pushes, or ploughs past, everyone courteously stays out of the way of photo takers, but most of all: everyone was having fun. The people drinking were carousing and noisy but it was all good natured, and everywhere was buzzing with music or laughter or chatter. The sky was a rain-threatening grey which lamentably washed out some of my photos even if the cherry blossoms were certainly a lot whiter than I had imagined.

Feeling thoroughly shattered, I headed back to the hotel and in my grand tradition of first nights on holiday: I got horribly lost. After readjusting the way I navigate (no longer looking for names I recognise, now looking for landmarks and colours) I nipped into a nearby convenience store (conbini) and picked up some Pocky and Pocari Sweat. I aimed to nap for a spell before tea but ended up watching a bizarre drama on TV about ghosts and birthday parties and school girls – I would come to learn that most things on Japanese TV are bizarre if you don’t know what the programme is about. Heading down to the hotel restaurant before my brain completely shut down, I had a chicken steak and was just contemplating leaving when Wendy and Tara appeared having awoken from their own nap.

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The conversation was light and covered random topics like which airline they flew, what they did, and finally mentioning  that they wished to go to Ueno Park while they could but were unsure of the subway system. I pontificated sleep – now past eight o’clock – but, for reasons unknown to me, I decided to go to Ueno Park again and snap some night photos. It drizzled on and off which made the walk equally refreshing and disappointing with me opting not to continually expose my camera to precipitation on the first day of the holiday. Despite only walking a short route around the park, I was co-opted by a Japanese couple to snap their photo beneath a cherry blossom and muttered at by a number of scruffy homeless people. Shortly after nine, head now devoid of useful thoughts, I wandered back with Tara and Wendy in tow. In my hotel room I managed to scrawl something vaguely intelligible in my previously blank journal and finally climbed into bed. In those fleeting moments before sleep, I realised that both Tara and Wendy had used “last night” to describe their time before their nap, despite still being “tonight”, I predicted that their jet-lag would be epic.