First night in Japan

Ueno, Tokyo

Clouds

Writing this on the Hikari train from Ōsaka to Fukuoka.

Yesterday we left Hong Kong for Tōkyō. Things went surprisingly smoothly. By talking to one JR representative after another we came closer and closer to the JR office that could give us our rail passes. They also booked seats on the NEX for us. One hour later we were at Tōkyō Station. After trying for 15 minutes to understand where to find the local express train we gave up and settled for the normal local train, which took us to Ueno in less than 15 minutes. :-)

At Ueno station we chose an exit on random and found that it had taken us to the west side of the station, just like we wanted. We went into a park and consulted the map for a while, with the help of a friendly old man, and finally followed our initial guess anyway. After a small detour we arrived at the position that our map told us was Yamanaka Ryōkan.

We walked around the area a bit to find the address. We would finally end up right where we started, which was indeed the position of the ryōkan if you would just care to look around you instead of focusing too much on the map...

Projects for the evening:

1. Money
2. Food
3. Internet café

After unsuccessfully working on problem 1 we went on to problem 2 at the Hard Rock café. There we met a Swedish couple, who explained that international banks have international ATMs. We asked the police at Ueno Station, who gave us directions to a bank which we then failed to find, but we found a post office, the ATM of which actually accepted our foreign cards.

We browsed the whole of Asakusa for an Internet café, but finally gave up and decided to try playing some pachinko, which is a flipper-like game, where the lack of flippers is compensated by the use of hundreds of balls simultaneously. Skilled players actually win more hundreds of balls, which they can then exchange for cash. Erik won five balls, I won none. Then we worked our way back to the ryōkan.

We woke up an hour late, because my telephone, which served as our alarm clock, was still set for Hong Kong time. We both agreed that the extra hour of sleep had been much needed and ended up leaving three hours later than planned and arriving four hours later than planned. A friendly Japanese English teacher helped us explain this to the hotel.