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May 09, 2004
Arrival
I flew from Philadelphia to Toronto, and then from there to Tokyo. It didn't really hit me that I was going to Japan until somewhere on that flight, since the plane announcements were in Japanese as well as English. I suddenly realized that I was going to Narita airport with almost no knowledge of the language at all! How was I going to make the 4-hour trip from Tokyo to Kanazawa over 3 trains and a taxi?
Well, I managed to do it. I got off the plane and went through customs (the officials were incredibly polite) and went to a ticket booth for the JR train system. All I said was "Echigo-Yuzawa," as that's where I needed to go, and the lady printed out 3 tickets that I would need to get there, and proceeded to explain that some of the tickets were special in some way. I didn't have any idea what she meant, so I just nodded and decided I would figure it out. It turned out that she was telling me to insert all 3 tickets into each turnsyle at once (I still don't really understand this).
I took the subway from Narita to Shibuya, which seemed scary, but was really incredibly simple. The trip from Shibuya to Echigo-Yuzawa was terrifying, as I had to take a shinkansen during rush hour. The bullet train was a two-story luxury vehicle that went incredibly fast and quietly. I skipped a few trains as I was too terrified to navigate through the crowds of people (lucky I was tall enough to see over heads), and finally (after vainly asking a conductor for help) I just hopped on a train and hoped for the best.
By this time I had figured out that despite the facts that English is taught in all schools in Japan and that English is prominantly displayed on every sign and t-shirt, nobody knows English here. Once I had that in mind, things became a lot easier.
Echigo-Yuzawa was a tiny little town, and since it was late at night, I was the only person in the station. I was scared I'd miss the last train or something, so I rushed to the ticket booth and bought a ticket for Kanazawa. During the ride I was so sleepy from the flight that I kept nodding off. I was really scared that I would fall asleep and miss the stop to Kanazawa, but luckily it was the last stop, so I really didn't have to worry.
(Japanese trains are really neat -- they have extremely polite workers who travel from cart to cart selling all kinds of drinks and snacks. In America, you're lucky if your train car's seats aren't all torn up.)
I finally arrived in Kanazawa and headed to the taxi area. I only had my host family's address in English, so it took the driver and 2 other men about 5 minutes to figure out where I needed to go. I thought I was set, so I sat back and relaxed... when we got to the area, however, the next adventure began.
The address that the driver had was wrong! I was emailed the wrong address to the house! The driver knocked on the door it told him to go to, but nobody answered. He opened the door and called out, but nobody was home. Luckily I knew the word for "telephone number," which I had. Once again, relief settled in... until we discovered that the number wasn't valid either. This was pretty funny, but I felt bad for the driver who was losing fare money at this point, and was being so helpful. Finally, we drove to the only house on the street with lights on, and it was the right one. *Phew*
Posted by dminky at May 9, 2004 11:30 PM
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