Well... I'm alive!

*Follow the linked text by scrolling through Webshots when you click on the first link ("Natalie", below) or just open select pictures. Sorry if Webshots is slow!

     Hopefully no one was too anxious to get some info from me about the first few days... or to know that I did in fact make it to where I was supposed to be. To make a long story short, I, uh, got by with a little help from my friends and to the DK House relatively easily. If you care to read in detail, hopefully I can fit all of my pictures and a good bit of information in a semi-compacted area.


     First, meet Natalie and Jen, my two main travel compadres. Both are friends from my Japanese classes at UVA and we had been coordinating our itineraries from the beginning. We began at Jen's house in Vienna, Virginia after Natalie traveled from Illinois and I, of course, from Virginia Beach. Basically we ate our final American dishes (I made sure to get a burger labeled "The All-American"), made a fort in her basement, slept, and got hopin' to Dulles airport Tuesday morning.


     Dulles was nice and easy, and the only thing to report is that I was allowed to have my saxophone as a carry-on, which I was expecting because it doesn't fit within the size regulations for carry-ons. It was definitely a relief to finally get on the plane with it (I got the O.K. at the check in) because I was expecting to get stopped every step of the way. If you've never been to Dulles, check out what you may find: strange looking shuttles (that one was for you, Mike) and perfume that is ironically called "Jet Lag".


     The flight was pretty fun and unexpectedly short-feeling. Our flight was United 803, leaving Dulles at about 1:00pm Tuesday and arriving 14 hours later in Tokyo at 4:00pm on Wednesday (so right now you're reading information that was written from THE FUTURE!!! woooo!). As far as entertainment, we got our own video screens which was nice to have even if I didn't use it very often. I did watch a pretty good movie about Queen Elizabeth while playing Pokemon on my DS, but most of the time I had the screen showing where the plane was. I ended up getting a a of shot of Canada and a couple of Alaska since I knew where we were and thought that seeing the two from far up would be pretty. Otherwise, I had to face the perils of avoiding nuts while I was on the plane (for anyone who doesn't know, I'm deathly allergic to nuts). To rid me of the problem, my meals were changed from "normal" to "heart patient". Here's what the inside looked like to the lunch of the latter. As you can see, there's quite a difference... one between a ramen-like meal and one of couz-couzy leafy lunch with sour tomatoes. Lucky for me, the stewardess were awesome and let me, the first time, exchange my meal for a normal one (pasta was exchanged for a pretty excellent beef and corn dinner) and, the second time, eat both meals. The last lunch we had I got waffles instead of a sandwich, so I was cool with that... But anyway, that's the about it for the plane aside from a couple hours of sleep and some podcasting (which I'll get posted for anyone that's interested)... doesn't really seem like a lot, but Pokemon, Patapon, podcasting, and other words that start with P take up a good deal of time, I guess.


     So 4:00! We arrived (the other girl in the picture is Teresa Lui, another one in our group of UVA Japanese students who was on the same flight but not seated near us) at Narita airport in Tokyo. I didn't really feel like I was in Japan yet for some reason (I think that I may have mentioned my lack of these feelings in an earlier post) and just let fellow UVA-ite Dan (who has been studying at Sophia since last semester) lead us to where we needed to go. Out of all of the members in my group, I decided not to use the service that took your luggage to your place of residence in Japan, so I toted my bags and saxophone from the airport to the train and to the DK House. Surprisingly enough, the airport is quite a long distance from Tokyo and even further from Saitama (which is the prefecture right outside of Tokyo that the DK House is in), so it took over two hours of train ride and train-transferring to get to Nishi-Kawaguchi station, which is about a 15-minute walk from the DK House (if you know where you're going and don't have luggage). As a side note, Teresa is doing a homestay and got off at a station before us, in case you would wonder where she went.


     But yes, Dan had a map ready for us and we hiked to the DK House, only asking a random person for directions once! When we got there (er, two or three hours after the office was supposed to close) Mr. S. Uzuki (or Mr. Suzuki, as we like to call him) gave us our keys and showed us around. Not that the DK House doesn't look nice, but it's definitely not as beautiful looking as in the pictures on their website (you know... the ones with text bleeding into them). It's much more like a hostel than I expected, actually... they temp you with promises of a nice common area, kitchen, gardens, etc., but the common areas are really small, the main kitchen area is pretty small, and the gardens are oddly placed on the street rather than having their own place outside the back of the building or something. Don't let that fool you, though, it's a nice place... reminds me a lot of living in a dorm.


     After throwing our stuff down we went out to explore a little and get something to eat. We ended up at a Japanese fast-food place called Yoshinoya where I got Gyuudon which, as you can see, is a bunch of beef thrown atop of some rice (it's a lot better than the stir-fry bar at O-Hill, which is the closest association that I can come up with). Exploring just added to our exhaustion, but on the plus side I did find a place to snag my favorite drink from the vending machines, Real Gold.


     Returning home we all went straight to our beds. Unfortunately, none of us decided to rent bedding from the DK House. We thought that we'd find a place to buy it that night and then return home to sleep comfortably. Instead, we returned to the DK House empty-handed and decided to sleep on our big wooden boxes. This didn't really bother me too much, as all I really wanted was to get some sleep, but it wasn't the best thing to do that on, obviously. Trying to rectify the situation by sleeping on all of my clothes didn't really help, either. To add to the unpleasant bed, it was freezing. I mean, I had to wear a waffle shirt, a hoodie, my blue jacket, a pair of corduroys, and my sweatpants to stay warm enough to fall asleep in the first place. Before I went to sleep I tried to figure out how the heating system remote worked, but never got it going, and since I didn't know Chinese (Jen) and I didn't have access to the internet (Natalie) due to battery power, I roughed it out.


     And here it was, the moment for the first time that I realized that I would be in Japan for a really long time. There was really nothing in my room, I was in a room in a strange place, and I knew that I would have to make all new friends again... and four months still seems like unimaginable time to be so separated from my friends and family (UVA is only two hours away from home, so it's a completely different deal even in the respects of being away from home in general).


     The plus side of the morning was that I had a beautiful view staring at me from outside my window (the third isn't beautiful... but whatever). I couldn't shower because I didn't have a towel yet and I didn't have any idea what time it was because I didn't internet or my watch set, so I just hung out in the cold for probably about four hours waiting for someone else to wake up. Eventually I brushed and washed my face and blah blah, and we went to go find some bedding and complete some other errands out in Warabi City. Since Natalie had never eaten at a Makkudonarudo (McDonald's in Japanese), we went there. I ordered a Teritama burger, which is short for Teriyaki-Tamago ("tamago" means egg). It was pretty good, and pretty Japanese for a McDonald's burger. Check out the wrapping, too... it's done in a diamond rather than in a square (and opens from a corner instead of a side). We also stopped at some point, too (maybe the night before), at a 7-11, which isn't too different from American ones except for different foods and a merger with another company, and a STOMP: the thrift store of Japan (or, at least, Warabi).


     The first business stop of the day, though, was to get our Gaijin (foreigner) Card application filled out so that we can get train cards and cell phones. I was missing the needed pictures (Natalie and Jen had kept some from when we filled out forms at home), so we had to go to a photo booth to get my taken for about $7 and return later. That experience was pretty rad in the case that we had a fun time listening to the officials talk in Japanese to us about the forms. They couldn't really read my handwriting, so I had to spell out words like "Norfolk" to them, as well as write my whole name in Japanese so they could, ummm... better understand my name? I don't really know. But the photo booth happened to be outside of the mall we were going to to find bedding! And find it we did, but since we were going to meet Dan in Tokyo, we decided to come back before it closed to buy it (and do some price checking while we were in the city).


     On our way to the registration station and to the train station, Jen and Natalie were stopping at every bank and post office possible to find a place to exchange their traveler's cheques. Thus, an important note for you travelers is: DON'T bring traveler's cheques. They're a pain because most people seem like they've never seen the things in their lives, and it's easier to just get a big wad of yen and bring cash dollars with you to exchange for a terrible rate (unless you WANT to spend a ton of time finding a bank that'll exchange them). They didn't get them cashed until...


     We headed to Shibuya to meet Dan. According to Dan, it's where all of the kids hang out and stuff, and when we got there I could see that this was right. THIS was the Tokyo I was looking forward to. I was commenting to Natalie about how everywhere we went there were just suits... business men going to and from work... and hardly any sign of people our age walking about. This puzzled me and even made me a little uneasy. The Japanese seemed like a bunch of lifeless beings on the train, not chatting to each other, not smiling... just doing their daily thing. Terrible. But then, Shibuya! That's where all of the youth were... a complete 180 from the dronage that was apparent in the other cities. Also, Shibuya is a lot different from Warabi. Warabi city is very crowded in terms of not having any space, but there aren't hundreds of people walking the streets at any given time. There's a nightlife of Pachinko in Warabi, but nothing is comparable to Shibuya. Shibuya is where there are huge, city buildings and floods of people walking across the street all directions, many walking straight through the middle when the crosswalk signs say "go". All around there are restaurants, shops, arcades, bars... Claire's... whatever! It's pretty awesome to actually be a part of. My first real taste of "big city" was when I went to New York last year, but Shibuya makes even New York feel a little lame to me. It's so full of people that it's barely possible to drive anywhere. The streets that cars are able to drive on must just be very specific and one probably just drives through Shibuya because they absolutely HAVE to to get somewhere else. Having one of these around Virginia Beach would be really cool in the sense that I may never have to feel that there isn't really a place to GO again. I feel like I could just walk around observing people and things for really long times without feeling underwhelmed in Shibuya.


     Shopping was easy to do since the place, as told, was full of everything. I ended up picking up some towels, slippers (because in Japan you have to take your shoes off at the door of houses, and even establishments like the DK House, to change into slippers), and a power converter for my computer. Even the places to eat sound pretty cool. There's a kaiten zushi place (rotating sushi) that we went to eat that night that you had to eat seven plates in 20 minutes (not hard AT ALL) or else you were kicked out. Basically, the chefs stood in the middle making the different types of sushi and put the plates on a conveyor belt, the sushi moves towards you and you pick up the ones you want. I stuck to unagi (eel) when I could get my hands on it, but tried some weird stuff, namely this squid sushi, which tasted preeeettttty terrible. Like it had some really bad sauerkraut in it. I downed both pieces though, and Natalie even has a video of it, heh.


     Oh, and speaking of Natalie, all of the Japanese people seem to think we're married. So as far as picking up any of the ladies, I'm going to have to travel in groups larger than two girls and two guys in the future (it's even harder that Dan and Jen are together, too! Jeez...)


     After dinner we went to an arcade and I played some four-player Gundam game (called "Gundam VS. Gundam"... how straight forward) and got a high score on Taiko Drum Master! I'm going to have to take a picture of an arcade next time I go to one because they are so cool... one half is dedicated to actual games... mostly tons of fighting games that range from Street Fighter II to Tekken 6... and then the other half just has a bunch of gambling machines. There's one game that I remember seeing (and playing, as forced by my host brother at the time) a few years ago that was a big horse racing simulation. But, instead of racing the horses, you bet on these horses that are programmed into the game... each have their own stats and records and whatnot... and the screen is HUGE!!!


     For those that don't care about such things, we ended up making our way back to the train station because were so fatigued from the day's events and STILL had to go get our bedding.


To be continued after we get dinner! (I've been at this for at least two hours now... and it's 9:20pm)


     Having only one train fiasco so far (for some reason one of the trains that went from Akabane station to Shinjuku to Shibuya according to multiple signs stopped at Shinjuku and started going BACKWARDS!) we stopped at Warabi station because it was closer to the place where the bedding was. After snagging a sale on the bedding we made a realt on.....
fall asleep, sorry... we


(the next morning...)
     Continuing on, we carried our huge bedding packages back to the DK House, but unfortunately got lost along the way somehow. When we finally made it back we were greeted by Mr. DK House himself with some blank looks, saying that he was staying up for yet another study abroad student (only later did Natalie point out that he was probably looking at us that way because we had decided to go buy bedding instead of renting it... but what was he expecting us to do? sleep on the wood?). Quickly we headed upstairs to crash in our respective rooms. Before going to bed, I set up Skype (my user name is gregory.weaver in case anyone happens to want to try and catch me on it) and called my parents. Not sure if I mentioned this before, but calling cards are a complete hassle. There must be some secret to using them that I didn't find out and don't remember from the past 'cause I just didn't get mine working. Easiest thing to do is just set up a Skype account as far as I'm concerned... you can talk to other Skype users for free or pay $15 for minutes at a rate of about 2 yen a minute (which is approximately 2 cents). Of course, just make sure you have a microphone to use.


     The next couple of days I'll cover tomorrow or the next day, I presume. I realize this post was extremely long (kudos and thanks for those who got through it all), but I assure you that when classes start and whatnot I'll just be abridging like crazy. It's Saturday today and I'm very well-rested, so I'm all ready for an adventure in the city. Until next time...!

PS: I did NOT proof-read this... it's way too long to read again... so if there are any grammar or spelling errors, kindly let me know. Thanks!