Well, I’m back home and I think I’m over my jet lag. Frigging busy though. Looking for a job is a pain in the ass. Anyway, I managed to find a bit of a break right now, so here’s the rest of day 2, as I barely remember it.

More of Day 2

OK, so where I left off was that I made it to the subway station and then walked to another station. This was all so that I could use my unlimited ride pass. I hopped on the subway that I hoped would take me to Ikkebukuro because that’s where I was hoping to go. Actually, I wasn’t really able to hop so much as I crammed. It was rush hour after all. The subway was filled to the brim with an odd assortment of school kids in school uniforms and businessmen in business uniforms (more commonly known as suits) with a couple of lost-looking fools sprinkled here and there.

Along the way, I was starting to feel like the Tokyo Metro pass wasn’t such a good idea if I had to stuff myself onto another subway and walk 420m just to use it. But then I noticed that we passed the Korakuen station. Hmm, Korakuen. That sounded familiar. It’s part of my hotel name. So…maybe…I’m near my hotel. A quick check of the Tokyo City Atlas (I owe my life to this book) showed that the Korakuen was just a block away rrom my hotel. w00t! So now there’s a Tokyo Metro station near my hotel! The pass wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

By the time I got to Ikkebukuro, the train was mostly empty and I this time I managed to hop off. And then I hopped into another huge sea of people. I tried to look for a place to stop and check the map to figure out where I was but if I stood still, I probably would have been run over. Since everyone was heading in the same direction, I just went with the flow. Not a really smart thing to do, but being smart isn’t my strong point.

I finally found a chance to check my map and headed over to a park. Since it was still early in the morning, everything was closed, so all I could do was walk around and hang out at parks with homeless people. Once the sea of people had receded, Ikkebukuro was actually pretty relaxing. I wish I had gone there when things were open though. I would have liked to see the Toyota building and gone to Nekobukuro to taunt my allergies, but maybe next time.

After wandering around Ikkebukuro, I took the subway back home. This is where it gets really fun. When I went back to my hotel and tried to get my key, the dude at the front desk asked me if I wanted to check out. Wha? I got out my receipt and sure enough, it said I was planning to leave after one day. Fortunately, I had my Expedia reservation printed out and I showed it to him. After a lot of words I couldn’t understand, he said everything was OK and gave me my key. Whew.

Man, this is getting kind of long. I’ll finish it up another time.

I just realized how stupid this is. I was supposed to log my travel adventures as they happen, not a week after the fact. Anyway, I’m sitting at the airport in Taiwan waiting for my flight back to SF (a.k.a. home…sweet home). I figure I’ll tap out a few paragraphs before the booze takes effect.

Japan Day 2: 5/1/08
The second day is when the real adventures began. Thanks to the rotation of the Earth relative to our sun, I woke up at about 5am and opened the shutters. Then I freaked out because it was so bright. I checked my watch and my Treo (alarm clock) and both had the same time, so I figured that I set my clocks wrong. Then I checked the clock that came with the hotel room and it said the same time. Then it dawned on me (pun brought to you by a dishwashing detergent company): Japan doesn’t celebrate daylight savings time.

The hotel served breakfast at 7am, so I rolled around in my ultra-compact quarters until then. Breakfast consisted of bread-like material, egg-like material, vegetation, orange juice-like fluids and coffee. Oh, and croissants. Gotta have those. I made my way through breakfast enjoying the view of a still-dormant Tokyo and then I made my way to the train station again. Today, I would get to use my 2-day Tokyo Metro subway pass. I did. Except I took a Toei subway line to the “closest” Tokyo Metro transfer station. At that station, I walked 420m (that’s what the sign said) to the Tokyo Metro line and hopped on the subway.

And now it’s time to get on the plane…

I figure I’ll get a post in about my first day in Japan before I completely forget what happened. My memory isn’t completely clear right now so I’ll use my imagination to add details.

Day 1: April 30, 2008
Ahh. Back to the airport early in the morning. I made it to the terminal about an hour before boarding so I had a chance to walk around a bit. My gate was right next to an electronics shop (awesome!) with a big Gundam in front of it (awesomer!). Between gates, there were photo galleries of places all around Taiwan so I checked out those as well. The galleries were set up to look like jungles and beaches, which was cool. What would have been cooler would be if I had taken pictures instead of describing it in a sentence.

On the plane, I played pachinko on the in-flight entertainment thing. There was really no point to it. Just a bunch of balls flying through holes. Most of the balls didn’t go through holes. Numbers changed. Noises were made. I don’t get it. I also played Bejeweled. Unfortunately, this was right before we began our descent so I didn’t get to see how awesome the game was.

After landing in Japan I made it through immigration without trouble and made my way to the train ticket counter. The person at the counter spoke enough English and I gestured wildly enough for me to not only get a train ticket in to Tokyo, but also a 2-day Tokyo Metro subway pass. Cool. I followed the signs down to the train tracks and got onto the train that was waiting there, hoping it was the right train.

It was. There was only one JR line there and it only goes in one direction. I couldn’t go wrong. But I could have tried harder. The train ride took almost 1.5 hours. At one station, I needed to transfer from the rapid line to the local line because the rapid line didn’t go to my final station. So I got off of the train and, to my horror, there were no English signs anywhere. Anywhere. Except for the big sign that said to go downstairs for the local line. That was in English. The rest of the trip finished without incident. I got out the wrong exit from the station so I took the scenic route to the hotel. On the way, I passed a takoyaki store, which was important because after more wild gestures, I had takoyaki for dinner.

Feeling adventurous, I took my first subway ride down to the Imperial Palace. I’d gone there before but this time I got to walk around more. I was taking some pictures by the water fountains and an Indian couple asked me to take their picture. And then the dude asked me if I wanted a picture. He did this all in Japanese. But I just looked at him like I was stupid (I was) and tried to converse in English. That did the trick. I walked around looking for more parks and more things to take pictures of but it was getting dark. One map I had said there was a a Godzilla statue somewhere nearby, but I couldn’t find it. Disappointed, I returned to my hotel.

I’ll have to post a picture of my hotel room later. It’s very small, but it has everything one would need in a hotel room. And as a plus, it’s right across the street from Tokyo Dome, home of the Yomiuri Giants (whose logo looks surprisingly similar to the SF Giants logo). I watched them play the Hiroshma Toyo Carp (whose logo looks surprisingly similar to the Cincinnati Reds logo) that night on TV from my hotel room, across the street.

And that was my first half of a day in Japan.

Well, I’m back in Taiwan again. My internet access in Japan wasn’t all that great so I didn’t make any updates from there. The wifi from the hotel room let me load Gmail and Yahoo mail so that I could read messages but I couldn’t send anything. However, I could look up train schedules on Jorudan with no problem, so that’s all I did on my computer. That was good because I brought an AC adapter with a a 3-prong plug but there were only 2-pronged outlets at the hotel.

Aside from the painful lack of internet access, Japan was pretty awesome. I’ll get some pictures up at some point. Here in Taiwan…it’s raining. And from the looks of things, it’s raining pretty hard. The rain seems to follow me.

Phew. Arrived in Taiwan last night. Due to some brilliance in planning, I leave for Japan about 8 hours after I arrived. And due to some brilliance in timezones, I got 2 hours of sleep. Cool. Back to the airport in 30 minutes.

I’m going on a trip to Japan and Taiwan again so, like last time, I’ll post the happy fun fun things I see on a trip log. I’m going to call it a trog. I hope it catches on.