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April 22, 2005
Japan, pt I
Thank goodness our hotel has computers with internet access and it's free! I have been so jet-lagged these first few days--let's hope it's temporary.
First off, I have to say that this will probably be my one and only trip to Asia if or this side of the Pacific only because of the plane ride. I can't handle 18 hours of travel time, especially when it involves 13 hours on a single flight with crappy in-flight entertainment and only one book (and not a super interesting one) to read (I ordered some books before we left but, unfortunately, they didn't arrive on time).
We flew into Nagoya, a city located between Tokyo and Kyoto. Don't know if you've noticed but flights to Nagoya have been really cheap these past few months (they just opened a new airport) which is why we decided to come to Japan. Our first lesson in Japan was that eating out will probably be more challenging than we anticipated. Most restaurants don't have English menus or menus with pictures (at least in Nagoya, although I wouldn't imagine that it would be much different elsewhere) and, unfortunately, since neither Adam nor I read Japanese we had to confine our dining selections to whatever place had either which wasn't easy to find. Our second lesson in Japan was that just about anything associated with train stations are confusing. They're really big and filled with people (at least the ones we've seen) and a lot of the employees don't speak English which makes things like buying tickets and finding out where to go quite difficult and we're probably relatively lucky in that Adam does speak a little Japanese.
The challenges aside, we've enjoyed Japan so far. It's a pretty fascinating country between the obsession with cuteness, the high value placed on politeness and courtesy, and Japanese television, among other things. Yesterday was spent at the World Expo which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, the more popular pavilions had really long wait times and I don't know that I would wait three hours in a line to meet the President much less a pavillion with a few minutes worth of eye candy so there were a number of sights that I wanted to see that we missed out on. But we still saw some pretty neat sights--My favorite was the Earth Room which you can see a picture of here. We also went to this pavillion with a # of cool robots, including what was essential a white stuffed toy baby seal that would respond lovingly as you pet it (so Japanese!). We left Nagoya last night and are now in Tokyo. I'm definitely excited about being in the city but am anxious about getting utterly lost between not knowing where to get out of the train stations (some of which have a million exits), not understanding Japanese addresses yet, and Tokyo supposedly being just a really confusing place for tourists!
Posted by Jennifer at April 22, 2005 11:30 AM