Here I sit in a Japanese hotel room in Hirosaki, Aomori, Japan. It is hard to come to grips with. The whole arrival in Japan and subsequent journey to my present location has been and still continues to be the most intensely lucid dream I have ever had - I fear that I might wake up tomorrow, back in my bedroom in Maine. After all the talk, all the preparations, my money is where my mouth is. Perhaps you would like to share with me the events that have transpired over the past 24 hours or so, complete with pictures and video? I thought you might.
My day (or rather, morning) started out a little rough. I was tossing and turning throughout the night, in a mixture of excitement and anxiety over the days to come. At about 2 A.M., I got up, gathered together my bags and luggage and headed downstairs. Shortly thereafter, my parents woke up and came downstairs. The drive to Logan International in Boston was a mostly unceremonious affair - I had all my luggage prepared and ready by the night before, so there was no last-second rummaging around trying to find some missing item.
We arrived at Logan well before my flight, at about 6:30ish. After parking the car and heading inside, I secured my boarding pass and checked my luggage. We made our way to the security checkpoint shortly thereafter. Saying goodbye to my parents at was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It wasn’t until I reached this threshold, this precipice, this point-of-no-return that it finally hit me, “this is for real.” My mom cried and my dad shook my hand.
At this point, I went through security with zero issues and proceeded to my gate. The plane was parked outside the gate when I got there.
It was in this plane that I would be flying to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, from where I would departing on my 15+ hour plane journey to Tokyo’s Narita. Unfortunately for me, the flight was delayed by about half an hour. Eventually, I got on the plane, took my seat and conked out for a bit.
After touching down in Chicago, I came to realize that my flight to Japan was leaving in a scant 20 minutes. They kept promising in Boston that all the other flights would be delayed, but clearly this wasn’t the case for me. With my stomach growling, I ran to find some fast food. There was a little bakery-type place near the gate, where I proceeded to scarf down a ham and swiss panini with a cup of hot black coffee.
Making my way back to the gate, I called up my parents and talked to them as I boarded to plane to Tokyo. I took my seat just rear of business class (aisle too, just the way I like it). While chatting, I stowed my trusty backpack up in the overhead luggage bin and took my seat, but somehow in all this someone managed to sneak in on my row and take the seat next to me. I said my goodbyes to my parents and hung up the phone. I finally got a look at who was sitting next to me, a person who would be invaluable to me in the trip over and my arrival into Japan. Her name was Eiko Takagi, a student at the University of Tokyo, but I didn’t learn this until much later. For the first few hours of the flight, I just chilled out, but I knew in the back of my mind that I had to say something to her as a person interested in her culture and language. After the flight attendants brought us the dinner selection for the evening (chicken and potatoes), I took this as my opening.
“The food’s not too bad, is it?”
For a great portion of the rest of the flight, we discussed high and low Japan, Maine, our colleges, movies, our significant others. She is a digital film student who was coming back from visiting her boyfriend who works in Canada for an insurance firm. It was in this that I found we were under somewhat similar predicaments. She had a loved one that she was leaving for a while to travel halfway around the world, and she was studying a major that is very close to what is offered as a concentration in my own major at UMaine, New Media.
It didn’t take long at this rate for the plane to reach Tokyo. It was at this moment that I caught my first glimpse of Japan out the small, round window beside Eiko.
After the plane touched down, reality completely turned upside down for me. I was here. I had finally made it. We got off the plane, took a little monorail to the main terminal (chirping that the doors were opening and closing in Japanese and English) and made our way to the disembarkation point. Here, a young Japanese man with a close, smart haircut and suit took the fingerprints of my index fingers and my photo. He waved me through. At this point, a mixture of jetlag and sensory overload created in me a kind of narcotic effect. Everything seemed to me like it would to a child - new and exciting. People speaking Japanese everywhere. Signs with super kawaii characters selling credit cards. I thought it might be an alien world I had touched down in, but there were the things that kept me grounded. The place did look like an airport. There was a baggage claim section, which is where I headed next.
I made my way down the escalator and found Eiko collecting her luggage. She helped me with a cart and I proceeded to put my luggage on it. Clearing customs was just as easy. I gave the uniformed man the card I had filled out previously on the plane (I declared nothing) and I was waved through to the front lobby of Narita. I thought the Narita I had seen already was awesome. But this was the big time. Tons of people everywhere, many of which were holding signs, presumably waiting for the same people I had just flown with. Eiko and I made our way over the the desk for the bus companies. We both needed buses - myself, to get to Haneda and catch my connecting flight to Aomori, and Eiko to her home just outside Tokyo.
After a brief dialog in Japanese (which I managed to catch a bit of), Eiko informed me that transport to Haneda could be had for 3,000円. I paid the lady at the counter, my first monetary transaction in Japan. I clutched the bus ticket close.
We made our way outside, and the temperate air of Tokyo hit me full force. The air smelled of activity, activity that I was trying desperately to comprehend. Buses coming and going, people, cars, the cherry blossoms swaying, the perfect asphalt roads taunting me out the craptastic ones we have back home. But I didn’t have too much time to think about it because Eiko was already wisking me away towards my bus stop, where she told me to give my luggage to the man on the sidewalk, who gave me a ticket I would use to retrieve my goods once I had arrived at my destination.
It was at this point that Eiko and I had to part ways, but not before exchanging email addresses and having a photo.
She told me to keep in touch, and maybe the next time I come to Tokyo we could meet up again. I thanked her profusely for everything, and she returned the gesture in kind. I watched her disappear into the crowd inside the doors to Narita.
Now I was on my own, all alone in Japan. I remembered what she had said about the bus - it was the one after next. I waited, and while I waited I took some photos. Here you can see what I saw of Japan for the first time in person.
The bus arrived at 17:25 sharp. The Japanese tend to be punctual like that. I got on the bus and stared in amazement at the scene going on around me. Never had I seen such order, cleanliness, and well-marked roads and buildings in an airport ever. Everything was shades of blue and white. I didn’t have much time to ponder over it though, because the bus stopped to pick up one more group of passengers, among whom happened to be a handful of U.S. Marines, on their way to Haneda to pick up a flight to the base in Okinawa. A young man with glasses, nearly-shaved hair and a confident face asked, “is it all right if I sit here?”
“Go for it.”
So it was to be that I shared my first views of downtown Tokyo and a twilight silhouette of mount Fuji with a North Carolinian on his first ever trip away from the U.S. He was to stay in Okinawa as a food preparer. Him and his outfit had just completed basic job training and were now out in the real world. His thick southern accent and our rough American dialog about small towns, cars and the little differences we were picking out was an absolute diametric of the clean, sleek highway and city we were passing through.
At Haneda we parted ways, as he and his outfit had to get off at terminal two while I was on my way to terminal one. Terminal one was on the other side of the highway from terminal two, a mirror image of the other with the road cutting right down the heart of the highway. Inside Haneda was many more Japanese than I had seen at Narita, in terms of the ratio of gaijin-to-Japanese. Here I was able to speak my first real words of Japanese, even if they were basic thank yous, where is, and I’m sorrys. I made my flight to Aomori right on time.
This flight was different from the flights I had taken thus far. This one was on Japan Airlines, so I was greeted with some of the friendliest and most overtly polite stewardesses I had ever seen. Every one bowed as I went by. After I took my seat, one offered me a copy of the Japan Times in English. I fell asleep, and was later greeted upon waking by a cute little sign adorned with smiling, vaguely chicken-like creatures stating their desire to not disturb me and offer services once requested. You just won’t ever get service like that on an American flight, ever.
I landed in Haneda and got my luggage. The gaijin-to-Japanese ratio was now at zero. I was the only foreigner I saw from that point to the point where I am now, typing this post in a hotel room in Hirosaki. But I was not to be dissuaded. I made my way outside where a series of buses were lined up. I saw one that said Hirosaki, and I recognized the kanji. Soon enough, a bus driver came out of the automatic doors I just did and made his way towards me.
“Sumimasen, Hirosaki basu?” I said in my best baby Japanese.
He responed with a nod and gestured for me to place my luggage under the bus. After thanking him, I boarded the bus, the last leg of my journey. The trip from Aomori to Hirosaki was roughly 45 minutes, and it was the most relaxing leg of the trip by far. Rural and small-city Japan rolled by me in the dark. I was reminded very much of my own home state and my own hometown. Except for the many flashy pachinko parlors I saw, it was a deadringer.
After getting off the bus and paying the fare of 1,000円, the friendly bus driver helped me with finding my hotel, which was conveniently right across the way from where I was. Inside, I was greeted by a pair of female desk clerks who pulled up my reservation for the night, took my payment in advance for the room and even gave me the gift of a free traveler’s alarm clock. Into the narrow elevator I went, and up to the forth story I ascended.
So here I am, at the present moment. I’m dead tired, but still feel that this can’t be for real. Reaccounting the events of the last 24 hours has only served to intensfy that. I think I’m going to go to some much needed sleep. But I’m going to leave you with a final treat: a video I made out of video I took on my trip, in addition to a tour of a Japanese hotel room. :D I hope you enjoy.
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