My mode of time travel was ANA flight 9 that was decorated with large Pokemon figures. I got an outrageously good deal on plane tickets, the kind that makes you want to ask your row companion what they paid, just so you can gloat. But I didn’t. I sat there quietly and watched a Midsummer Night’s Dream starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Calista Flockhart.
I arrived in Japan in “tomorrow,” while the rest of you suckers were stuck in “today.” I had a hard time grasping this concept as I made my “I arrived safely” phone call to my family back in Gaithersburg, MD. It was 4:30 am. 4:30 am calls in the Lovinger family household are generally not coherent. The next day when checking my email, I received a couple cheerful “thanks for making me think that you were dead” messages.
They speak a different language!
“Eigo” is English.
“Eiga” is movie.
Ok, my Japanese is terrible at best. And put in the stressful real life situation of using it makes it even worse. I tried to buy a train ticket to Nikko, a national park, and my opening line in Japanese was “Do you understand the movie?” A simple transaction became a scene as a series of people were brought before the gaijin (damn foreigner) wanting to know about the movie. I’d like to think that they were impressed by me bravely putting more and more word combinations together, but it’s more likely that they were terrified that I would mix with the rest of the population. I eventually got my ticket and arrived safely in Nikko. However, more mayhem soon ensued.
Goddamn, they’re polite.
In Japan, everyone has achieved saint-like demeanors.
I don’t believe in karma. I’ve never ever been nice to anyone, yet the people here were obscenely nice to me. I got nothing but good treatment there. Consider this story which will surely warm your heart:
I finally get to Nikko, and I think that my troubles are over. With luggage in hand, I climb onto the appropriate bus and head to my Ryokan (Japanese-style Inn). I even asked the bus driver in Japanese if I was on the right bus, and he understood me and said “yes,” so I felt quite pleased with myself. Then I made my first mistake. I sat next to the German tourist. Immediately, she set upon me, just babbling away, appealing to my huge ego. “Oh what a courageous girl you are, traveling by yourself.” (I just nodded bravely.) “However do you get around alone?” (Oh, I’m quite capable. It’s really not that hard if you pay attention to your surroundings.) And so on. So while she’s jabbering away, I completely miss my bus stop. I get off the bus and immediately know that I’m in trouble. I start walking. It’s cold, I’m in the mountains, and it’s starting to snow. This sucks. So I stop in this hotel along the road, and I use what is now my most often used phrase: “Nikko Ryokan wa doko desu ka?” Loosely translated, this means, “where the hell is the Nikko Ryokan?” Fortunately, the front desk guy had a five-foot by three-foot sized mounted map of Nikko located right next to him. He picked it up and started making all these complicated looking gestures that looked a lot to me like I would get even more lost. I pretended like I knew what he was talking about and then I asked him how long it would take me to get there on foot. “About 20 minutes.” I assumed that meant 20 minutes for someone who knew where she was going.
So I thanked him, and got on my way. I grabbed my bag outside, where I left it, and now this is where I have to guess what went on in the mind of my savior, the St. Front Desk Guy. I think that he saw my bag and thought that it would be dishonorable to allow a nice girl like myself to suffer, dragging a bag up the craggy roads of Nikko. I had walked only about three minutes and I was just about to make a wrong turn and get very lost when I heard a horn honking at me. “Oh great,” I thought to myself. “That’s all I need.” Well come on, I’m cute as a button and I’m used to horns honking at me so I just assumed that some driver was showing his appreciation. But no. It was St. Front Desk Guy coming to the rescue. He opened up the back door and into the car I hopped. St. Front Desk Guy drove me straight to Nikko Ryokan, with not a single word. Just a “sayonara,” when he dropped me off.
It’s crowded.
In Tokyo, everybody has a cell phone. And everybody shops. Totally unrelated? I don’t know. All I know is that these cell-phone-holding shoppers are out 24/7. Crowding the subways, eating in restaurants and in particular, flocking to the malls and shopping districts (there are many).
From the amount of people out and about ALL THE TIME, it doesn’t appear that anyone actually works. My New Yorker friend Rich actually put it best by saying, “I can’t wait to get back to New York, and away from these crowds.”
TV Sucks.
(Please also refer to the first paragraph on Japan, labeled “They speak a different language!”)
Ok, I don’t want to hear any of that “You’re in another land and should be experiencing the culture and the blahdey blah blah. And I can’t believe that you would watch TV when you could be doing blah de blah de blah.” You know that you watch TV when you go on vacation so don’t give me any shit for it.
So with that disclaimer, let me roll out the options that I had: Sumo wrestling (and it appears that there is 24 hour coverage on this), God-awful game shows that I can’t understand, God-awful children’s shows with high pitched voices that I can’t understand (this includes animated shows like that god-awful pokemon), News that I can’t understand, and Full House. Ok, so now you don’t think it’s so wrong for me to find out how Jesse and the gang are doing with those loveable twins. Right? Riiiight?
Those are some of my observations of the happenings 14 hours in the future. You’ll notice that I didn’t list any of the museums or any other sites that I saw, or hotels that I recommended or restaurants with spectacular food. Well I’m not a frickin’ tour guide. Get a Frommer’s. You’ve got to figure that stuff out for yourself.
Sayonara.
