The Eye of Patrick / Getting used to Japan

Getting used to Japan

Another post, and another day in japan!

So today is the 20th of august, and i have been in Japan for 5 days now…. it has been a wonderful ride so far… i do not know… i imagined what tokyo would be, and i do not know, i am not sure if it did not turn out as i had expected, but the good thing is that it has not turned out worst then i expected if that makes sense… like you know when you have a dream of a place that you want to visit, and you then visit it and it is good, but not equal to your dream you feel dispointed, that was my worry. But it has not turned out like that at all, it has matched my dream or exceeded it in many areas that i had not planned for it too hehe….

I spent the first 3 days of my trip in Narita with my friend, we did not do anything of an exciting nature that others would consider, but we spent time together, which was nice to hvae a chance to see her after such a long time . We went to the Airport to see off one of her roommates. There is a strange story here, it turns out they were both my penpals, but neither of them knew it until last week, so that was interesting to meet her, haha i called her Mean roommate hehe, but it turns out she is a nice person hehe… mean roommmate was only a joke though…

then the second day we walked around narita after going to the mall and ordering food, it was funny though… as the menu was all in japanese, but when she ordered for me, it was spaggetti meat sauce, hehe so i could have ordered it hhe…. i am learning to love the language katakana, for me it makes english words so cute hehe… i could never get bored of listening to it…. We walked around the mall and went to supermarket, i saw so many pocky flavours hehe… i love pocky!!! so i will buy some more next time, they are such a great sweet hehe…. We were suppose to go back to my hotel, but it turned out the shuttle bus that we were suppose to take, took a break between 2-4, so we had to wait hehe… which meant we walked around Narita, which was nice, as it was my first experience seeing real japan. The narrow streets, the small houses, and people darting in and out of buildings. The school girls, the business man, the diversity of Japanese culture, which is a break from the homogenous nature that is assumed of japanese culture from many people a far…

One of the things i enjoy greatly about Japan so far is the vending machines, i can’t say enough about them, they are simply amazing… they have so much stuff, and they are eveywhere. I think becuase they are everywhere i spend to much money on them, as it is too easy to get a drink, so far i hvae only seen vending machines for Smokes, beverages, alcohol, and camera’s, but i hear there are many many more of them….

Day before yesterday me and my friend (mariko) went to Tokyo as i was getting ready to make my trip down to my university in Hirakata, so we went to Narita Airport (tokyo airport) and it was a sight to be seen hehe… i have 2 suitcases, 2 bags, i am not the greatest packer. So it made having her a goodsen as i did not need to carry everything. One thing i am learning about Japan, or i knew but did not expect it to be this bad was that the banking system is not really that internationally tied, so we spent a good 30 minutes, searching Narita airport for a bank machine that would accept my bank card, this is a difficult thing to do, as we would find a bank machine, but then it would turn out that it was broken, so finally we found one.

Then we made it down to Keisei Line, where Mariko was putting her ticket away and i was like “oh we need our ticket ” and she was like yes… luckly the train was not coming for another 10 minutes, so she was able to go back to the top and ask for my ticket hehe… i felt so shameful haha…. but we got on the train and rode it to Ueno station. I discovered then and later on that people don’t normally talk on the train, there is sometimes a little talking, but the general rule is that you don’t talk on the train….

so we got to Ueno station and we had to search for my hotel, so many people were helpful i found, we asked a store, and she said sorry she did not know, but to ask the police officer and we did. He pointed us in the directions of the hotel, but both of us are not the best and finding places, so we nearly got lost. Then we asked a security guard at a bank and he guided us the way to the hotel, such a nice man….

The hotel was strange though…. we were tired from taking all our stuff to my hotel, so we just wanted to sleep, yes just sleep, but that was not allowed, unless she paid to stay there… so we had to pay another 3000 yen for 4 hours… hummm i think if we both were not very tired and tokyo was not exhausting then… we would not have paid that much. But this heat in Tokyo is just smoking hot, so it is very hard to keep going… so we took a break….

After our rest… we went to a korean resturant and had korean bbq!! (we were looking orginally for indian, but all we could find was Japanese curry) the korean bbq was amazing i thought… and the rice was so yummy….

After that it we walked around a bit, and talked, but she had to go home as it was getting late and her bus was about to leave. So we said our see you soons (we don’t say good bye) and i left ueno station, for the first time alone… and then went back to my hotel and chatted with my friends…. about my plans…

i see i posted a lot so far, so i will stop now and post tomorrow, may be after climbing mount fuji….

hope you enjoy my story =)

The Eye of Patrick

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