Hi there! My name’s Allison and I, along with four of my adventure buddies, journeyed to Tokyo (and later, Seoul) for the first time on October 9th, 2018. We wanted to be cool, so we gave ourselves the group name TS5 (TokyoSeoul5), and set off to cross the Pacific Ocean together. So I’m writing to tell you the very true, very many, and very entertaining stories of my first experience in Japan alongside TS5!
In my previous story, The Journey to Japan, you’ll have learned that just getting to the Los Angeles Airport was a struggle. But God kept His promise to me that I would see Tokyo & Seoul, and I was able to get on the biggest plane I’ve ever been on that would take us to our first destination: Narita Airport, Japan.
We had 11 hours of coasting over the Pacific Ocean, which is why we picked one of the greatest Airlines in the world: Singapore Airlines, which made us feel like queens even though we sat in the very butt-end of the plane next to the toilets (gotta save some money, you know.) But what did it matter when the snacks were the size of your head, or when the flight attendants gave you hot towels to freshen up your face when boarding and leaving the plane, and also should I mention that each flight attendant was charmingly immaculate, regularly gracing the aisles (and my eyes) with their breathtaking beauty and hospitality? Yes. This was Singapore Airlines.
After 11 hours of only seeing endless water out the plane’s window, I saw land. I plastered my face against the window and scream-whispered to my buddies, “I SEE JAPAN.” Little dots of fishing and cargo boats scattered every mile of the waters that touched the long, sandy beaches that stretched as far north as I could see. From the airplane window, I saw a huge football stadium, clusters of houses, and numerous green fields before I ever saw massive cities. In fact, when we landed in Narita Airport somewhere in the Greater Tokyo Area, it wasn’t in a cement jungle to begin with. It was actually in the countryside; I even saw a huge river fly below as the wheels touched down on the airstrip. I guess I always imagined landing in the midst of Tokyo skyscrapers, but I was delightfully taken by surprise at the beauty of Japan’s natural landscape right away!
I remember staring in awe out the window at the other planes on the tarmac that had words displayed in a completely different language. I was truly awestruck; It took 11 hours to get to a place that I felt, just seconds ago, never actually existed because I had never seen it. But now I was there. I was seeing Japan with my own eyes!
We could feel the jet lag already before the plane even parked. Our phones said 1:30pm local time, but to our actual time back home, it was 10:30am the day before. So we just stayed up all night even though the sun was in the middle of the sky when we stepped off the plane. (We’d quickly learn just what a 13-hour time change could do to a group of five hungry girls that had no idea where to go in a foreign airport.)
My insides were extinct and void of all energy as we entered the airport terminal, but the adrenaline of simply existing in Japan kept me eagerly alive somehow! We oo’d and ah’d at all the signs; English was now written as tiny subtitles while some sort of squiggly paraphernalia known as Japanese was the primary writing on everything. It was a really weird out-of-body-like experience, being someplace like nothing you’ve ever known…As we spent more and more minutes absorbing Japan for the first time, we noticed that English was hardly a language to be seen or spoken at all! This is what made it a real challenge to get anywhere in the airport, but we made it a priority to find the bathrooms first.
We found them easily despite the foreign jargon we couldn’t read, but my friends and I were both equally tickled and horrified that the toilet seats were like that of an alien throne–with probably 27 different buttons that did 27 different somethings. To this day, I would not be surprised if one of those buttons could launch me to the moon. But we didn’t know which button did that, much less any of the other ones (well, we could guess some by the pictures.)
“Press them at your own risk,” I told myself, and since I didn’t want to make a huge fuss in the public bathroom, I avoided the buttons entirely. Westerners are used to not using any of these fancy features anyway, right? Anywho, the foreign toilets were so foreign that I will never stop raving about them. Did you know: Most public bathroom stalls in Japan also have speakers that play audible sounds of trickling streams next to the seat as you do your business. It’s privacy for your ears.
So anyway… Culture Shock Test #1: Passed. Culture Shock Test #2: How in the world do we use the subway? How do we get tickets for one? How do we read the map? Does anyone speak English?
One of my adventure companions, Chelsey, had been learning Japanese on her own for some time, so this was an excellent opportunity for me to force her to practice what she learned! Quite literally. I pushed her right into a convenient store in the airport and had her ask the clerk if he could speak English. So she asked “Eigo o hanasemasu ka?” and the clerk immediately crossed his forearms to form a giant X, shaking his head violently, saying, “No-no-no English!” Apparently locals are very expressive to reject the English language, but I thought that moment was freaking awesome. Chelsey taught herself, tried it out with a native Japanese speaker, was understood, and we got a response (a rather unhelpful one but still, awesome.)
Despite “No-no-no English” Guy, a kind, older gentleman who just overheard Chelsey’s excellently spoken question approached us saying, “I can speak English! I can help! What do you need?” This was the first of many times we would encounter the selflessness of these kind locals, who tremendously helped us on our journey throughout Japan.
So we told the man we were trying to get to Yokohama, and he told us how to get there. First, we had to go to a booth to purchase tickets for the “JR Line” (Japan Railway Line.) Since this was the first time spending our Yen currency, we didn’t realize that the ¥30,000 we slapped down on the counter for five tickets was equivalent to $370 Canadian dollars. Whatever the case, we were thrilled to see the railway system for the first time (again asking for help finding which platform to wait by), and hopped onboard the super fast JR express train. (Fun fact: these trains reach a speed of 320 km/h or 199 mph!)
We stayed on this train for at least an hour, which gave us a wonderful opportunity to take in the natural colours of the countryside and let the monumentous moment sink in that, after tediously working toward this moment for nine months, we had officially arrived in Japan.
We caught a glimpse of the Tokyo Skytree on our journey, an iconic sight to Tokyo as is the Eiffel Tower to Paris! Once the train made a stop somewhere further into Tokyo, though, we now had to take a system of other smaller, less comprehensible trains to get to our specific destination. Mind you, none of us had ever read a Japanese railway map before, so we were quite at a loss to begin with. One of our adventurers got sick along the ride, which is understandable because we’ve also been awake for well over 20 hours, and we weren’t used to the motion of a subway train. During our railway transfer, I remember hauling our luggage back and forth, up and down stairs, as our team constantly correcting ourselves where to go in an attempt to find the station that would bring us to Yokohama… Eventually thanks to intense team effort, we got on the right train and, about another hour later, arrived in Yokahama!
The next challenge was exiting the subway station. We came face to face with weird gates people walked through. They would tap something, then the doors opened and quickly closed. What the heck is that? We thought with our very tired, somewhat irritated, still high on adrenaline brains. We didn’t have to deal with these when we first got into a station because we bought tickets for the JR Express train, which was kind of a direct transit until we transferred. Now we had to do a new thing, but we were too tired to understand it so we literally forced ourselves through the gates that started flashing red as we barrelled to the other side.
Later we realized we needed to tap cards on the gate to open them, which pays for the traveling fee. Ha! …We also realized there are security guards that monitor these gates, but they probably saw how helpless and English-speaking we were that they didn’t even bother to stop us. Was it, again, a gesture of local kindness? Or pity? I don’t care to know. We got through!
Onwards we went to get out of the station. We (somehow) figured out which exit to get to which involved an arduous amount of pulling my nearly 50-pound suitcase up and down and probably up-side-down and sideways–on all sorts of staircases and elevators and escalators. (Note: I recommend packing hardly anything at all. For real.) Thankfully, the locals were very patient and were in no hurry to push, yell, or give us nasty looks–though I’m sure they were as confused to find us in such a local area as we were to even make it there.
So we found our exit in Yokohama. Problem was, our AirBnB directions were very incredibly wrong and the host’s phone number was not dialling through, no matter what tricks we used. We had no service, not even Japanese cell service. I remember walking down blocks over and over again with my luggage and staring up at the buildings in complete awe. Lost in Japan. I took a deep breath and wondered, is this real? If we all weren’t so exhausted, I’m sure we would have had a better time being lost!
At one point we became so confused, we sat down and tried to regroup when two American guys approached us. They did their best to help us find our way according to the AirBnB address, but in the end accidentally guided us four blocks out of the way–for which we had to walk all the way back for. Walking isn’t a big deal, but with lots of luggage, 5 tired souls on the verge of emotional collapse and all…it was an intense time being lost in Japan so soon. After two hours of this silly nonsense and our timidness to approach anymore strangers, one of them approached us.
He was an older Japanese fellow who looked as though he were on his way to work or coming home from such, but whichever case, he was in a hurry. I could tell by the way he was running around every corner trying to find the address on our AirBnB listing. He spoke hardly any English but he must have felt compassion for those foreigners who were stranded on the sidewalk with no clue where to find our place to sleep!
But then he came running back from down another neighborhood and pointed down its street saying in his broken English, “There! Just over there!” He said it again two or three times, smiled, bowed slightly, and took off. When I get to heaven, I’m calling Jesus out for this man actually being an angel.
So it was thanks to the compassion of a complete stranger who took time out of his daily routine that us foreigners found our temporary home! We soon came to find as our journey unfolded that the Japanese people are incredibly kind and willing to practice their english to help foreigners the best they can, which is so heartwarming. Of course, every country has their rotten apples, but it was really hard to find them in Japan.
Anyway, we found our AirBnB tucked between two massive buildings, inside an apartment complex. We would never miss it again because it had a freaking Lamborghini parked in a glass garage by the elevator. Check out the photo to believe me, because I still don’t believe it and I saw it every day.
Our AirBnB was a beautiful, modern Japanese apartment with two beds (hard as bricks but that doesn’t matter when you’ve been up for like 24 hours straight), a small balcony, a bathroom and shower room, and a private bedroom with another bed. We took a moment to process what had happened in that timespan, and eventually drifted off to sleep.
Kind of.
The jet lag introduced itself to me in a brutal way, making me sick for the next eight hours or so (is it just me or does anybody else get physically ill from severe lack of sleep?) Despite the vomiting and all that fun stuff, the crew and I found ourselves waking up extremely early in Japanese local time anyway.
It was in the early hours of the day, when Japan just started to wake up, that the real adventures began.
Signed,
Allison the Adventurer
