One night and one day in Japan

Guess what, I am in Tokyo.
I got this beer from a vending machine.  I am in the top floor of the Ace inn in downtown Tokyo at 2 am on the nose.  I had a bit of bother coming in, as I expected, the hour plus subway ride from Haneda airport wouldn't happen, I got in just around 11:30 just as the last trains had already stopped, they told me. I made the instant decision that it was well worth blowing a hundred bucks on a taxi to get to my hostel when the other option was staying in the airport overnight and not making it to town.  I will not remember that whatever happens tomorrow costed a hundred bucks to get to in ten years, but I promise that barring severe head trauma I will remember whatever I wind up doing with my one day in Tokyo. The expensive taxi ride started after some explanation, and a few drawings that helped the taxi driver know where to take me.  He jammed the gas and we flew from the airport with g force speed.  Dark Tokyo sleeping neighborhoods shot past my window and in my head I saw visions of all the films I have seen from Japan live action and otherwise.  Here I was in country 11, which isn't so many countries for some people I know but a lot to show for my five years doing it.  I sank into the back seat and took it in.  I popped the mp3 player to Bruce Springsteen's born to run album and the ride got me through a good half of the songs.  If you know the born to run album (and if you don't that is your homework) than you understand that those songs build and build to crescendos and take their time getting there, we found my hostel at about mid way through that album.
So at this very moment
  I am sitting on the top floor of the hostel, it is a real back packery place, the first I have been to in a while.    These are places that have common rooms with guide books handy and maps on the walls.  The staff is fluent in English and super helpful and the walls are often bright neon colors.  This one in particular has 25 dorm beds in one room but it's cheap and after the flight I had I will be fine with whatever.  As I write this, no lie, a kid in his early 20's continues to learn the opening cords to the Nirvana song 'come as you are' on an acoustic guitar.  He has been doing so for about an hour, and I think for new guitarists the song must be the new 'Smoke on the water'.  I am enjoying the living hell out of my second Asahi beer that I bought with coins from a vending machine.  I sort of need to go to the john, but I can't because there is some kid passed out dead drunk in the toilet stall.  It's not an emergency, I'll just go downstairs in a minute I recon.   A big screen tv has Japanese women's volley ball, and has for a while though nobody is looking.  I am sitting in the corner writing because all other table surfaces in this room are literally covered with empty beer cans, empty paper bowls of instant noodles, fruit, the odd vodka bottle here or there, and I kid you not a derelict mac book pro that someone has just left completely unguarded for anyone who wants it to swipe, not that anyone will.

The flight from Seattle to Japan was painful as usual.  18 hours with only one or two ways to position your legs stiffens the muscles until the legs are numb.  I usually prefer the window to have something to lean against, but it means waking up whoever is next to you whenever you want to get up.  In this case it was a very small Japanese woman who had decided to sit sideways on her seat with part of her butt on my leg.  I was actually ok with this arrangement and we slept that way for most of the flight.  It is truly an odd experience to that close and actually being in physical contact with a perfect stranger while sleeping.  There is an intimacy that occurs from sleeping with someone, and here I really mean sleeping, which can extend to strangers.  At one point there was massive turbulence and the woman next to me was sweating, literally sweating and tense with worry.  I told her it was ok, it was normal, all smiling.  And I don't know if she understood the words but seemed ok after that.  And we slept most of the long night day that is international plane travel inches apart or against each other and when we landed we went our separate ways.

the rest of this was written a couple of days later.  I walked for seven hours in downtown Tokyo before returning to the hostel to fetch my bags and start on my way to the airport.  And I still didn't see the whole thing.

Here is what I did:

I told you about getting into Tokyo.  I wrote that first paragraph and drank a few vending machine beers until about 2.  The beds were little wooden coffin holes in the wall which one climbed in the small end side off like tombs in a mausoleum.  The bottom was lined with a thin stuffed mat and it had a curtain and little reading light.  I slept until 6 on the dot when I woke myself and got my shit together and my bags stowed, ready for action on four hours sleep after an 18 hour plane ride.  If this was to be my only day in Tokyo I wouldn't spend it laying in my coffin, I would go out and live sleep or no.

I hopped on the train heading to a Temple that the guy at the desk had told me about.  At about 6:30 or 7 I emerged from the station into a quiet alley way cluttered with still closed hole in the wall local food stalls.  Around the corner I found the temple park, a massive area that went for ages from the looks of things.  Before going in I dived into the only open restaurant I could find for a fast breakfast.  I sat down and pointed at a box on a menu, which I like to call Asian meal roulette.  It turned out to be a massive, massive bowl with a sesame soup broth with noodles and different meats.  It was served with a large portion of fried rice with vegetables and shrimp and a place of pot stickers.  This would have been a crazy large diner, and I wasn't that hungry but I quickly realized how good it was and dug in.  Plenty of energy for the day I had planned.

The temple was a peaceful expanse of pagoda buildings with the alters and Buddha statues.  There was a giant pot of incense wafting fragrant clouds into the easy breeze.  In one corner there was a water trough with little wooden scoops for people to wash hands, face and mouth.  over here there was a waterfall which emptied into a small stream with cat sized bright blue coy fish, over there gardens surrounded ancient tombs.  I sat on a wall for a while and watched the old men stroll happily in one's and two's, some stopping to pray, some just taking in the place the way I was.

The tallest tower in the world is in Tokyo, and I could see it from where I was sitting.  Nothing was open yet so I figured I might as well head in that direction.  I walked for about thirty minutes, for a time along a river and through small house neighborhoods separated by dark alley ways.  I saw a guy with a khaki fisherman's hat and long lens camera heading in what I perceived to be the direction of the tower, so keeping a careful distance I followed.  I was about a block behind him, but I am still pretty sure he was aware of but not annoyed by his shadow.  Well, if he was annoyed he certainly didn't show it.  Finally, I was in the plaza area to go to the top of the world's tallest tower.  I went in the lobby to check it out and it was a bit pricey to go to the top and the line to do so was endless.  If this was to be my one day in Tokyo I wasn't about to spend thirty minutes to an hour waiting in line, I was going to go out there and live.  Plus I am seriously terrified of heights and it looked scary.

Soon I found a tourist information shopfront.  Tokyo is amazing, it seems to have volunteers standing on every street corner giving directions, and I saw at least three of these tourist information shopfronts.  I don't think I have ever seen a city that paid more consideration to visitors.  The woman in the tourist office fixed me up with a map and a booklet of tourist spots and lent me a pen so I could plot my next move.  I settled on one area that I could reach by subway that had a number of temples and museums.  I had a subway map, by the way, and was pretty much doing fine with it.  On first glance the rail system is chaos, but each station is numbered and each line is color coded and it wound up being pretty easy.

So I got to the next area at around 10 or 10:30.  I had to sit down and drink something, I was exhausted.  I found a groovy juice bar and went into the john to do my thing.  The toilet had a box with buttons that I started playing with and found out about the butt sprayer.  This was funny for a second until I realized that I couldn't find the off switch and everything I pressed made the toilet blast my back side in new and novel ways, the more I pressed the more furious the water became.  Finally I figured it out and everything was fine and my butt was clean, man.  Be careful with those Tokyo butt spray commodes, they are no jive.

The park was cool from the tree covering, traffic and city noise gave way to singing birds and crickets which made it not feel like the center of one of the world's largest cities.  In the park I found a Temple on top of a hill.  There was an area on the outside the temple with folding chairs set up.  I took a seat, and the Monks inside sat with their backs to us facing the Buddha while chanting softly.  It was so peaceful, I closed my eyes and meditated for a spell.  I am getting better at meditating, it really is a matter of practice.  When I first tried it several months ago when Eddy took me to a Zen center my mind was cluttered with thoughts about frantically emptying my mind, but now I find it easier to just clear things away without too much effort.  I focused on the chanting as well as my breathing and I guess I did that for around ten or fifteen minutes, just long enough to feel 'ahhhh'.  The Monks started flipping out texts which were constructed in the manner of a hand fan that spreads.  Each time they spread the folds of the text they did so in a fast fanning motion one after the other to represent a wave, each of them chanted louder when they were fanning out the texts.

Another temple sat in the middle of a lake which had five foot tall lily pads so thick you couldn't see water.  They were roughly the same height and looked like an alien landscape, like you could just get in and walk on a lily pad surface.  In the temple a Monk was playing a massive Taiko drum and anyone who knows me will understand that I listened to that guy drum for a long time.  I then walked around the lily pad lake.  I saw a duck that was quacking and I sat for a while to see what he was quacking about but soon lost interest and kept walking.

I wandered and wandered and wandered.  It was getting hot and my feet hurt, so I went into the National museum next which was air conditioned.  The national museum consists of three buildings, I went first into the ancient Japanese art building on a whim and wound up staying for several hours.  Of the many rooms with beautiful painting and pottery and artifacts I was most impressed by the katana swards.  They looked brand new, I mean brand new reflecting light in bright silver, some were from the 13th century.  I thought for a moment about what these swards had done and seen.  I wondered how many people they had killed and if they were used by just men or villeins.  A sward can pass through a lot of hands in 600 years.

I ducked into the Asian art building but just didn't have the energy.  I was losing my feet and the lack of sleep was starting to nag at me.  I found a little out of the way kitchen and ordered a fish cooked in soy sauce dish on rice with a few Asahi beers.  One teen looking girl behind the bar was training two others on how to pour beer without making too much head.  They didn't seem to be getting it, one poured a beer that was almost three fourths foam.

Back to the hostel, I grabbed my massive suit case on wheels and my hiking back pack.  Some people need a moving van to move to a new place, I need an extra checked bag.  I had to drag those things through three subway lines spanning an hour to get to the station that had the express train to the airport.  Oh, I didn't tell you that Tokyo has two airports, well I landed at one and took off from another.  So by now the four hours of sleep and two beers and dead feet were not helped by the hiking back pack or suitcase dragging.  I asked someone at the last station about the train and got on when it came in.  This train was different, I couldn't find any of the stops on my map, and we kept waiting for five to ten minutes at each stop.  It was taking forever and it really didn't feel right.  Finally I asked someone about the airport, he told me I was on the wrong train.  Not exactly the wrong train, I was on the local commuter which ended at the airport, but from what I gathered it would take ages.  He showed me where to go and even waited for the express train to get there until his train left.  I can't even explain how nice the people in Tokyo were to me that day, I have never been in such a large city with so many people so into helping a foreigner.  What great people walk the streets of Tokyo.

The right train was still quite a ways form my station, and when we came in I had the choice of terminal one or terminal two.  Not knowing where Delta was I took the wrong one and had to wait around for a while for the next train to come along to get me straight.  Now I was antsy, it was getting closer and closer to my flight.  I showed my boarding pass to the people at check in and was spirited past an endless line of people, they got me sorted really fast, such nice people.
At the gate I sat and waited as people started to line up to board.  They always call it by zones and I was zone three, no need to stand around waiting so I sat and watched.  The people were mostly Chinese at this point, and even though they called out for only zone one over and over people stood in one line regardless, the flight attendants shrugged and it took close to an hour to board and I sat until the rest had gone in rather than wait in the line.  And I sat and watched and it felt pretty good to be off my feet.


Update
I had my first day of work and am really happy.  The people are wonderful and the school is massive but all about the teaching and not the backpacking.  I am so far the only American and people have started asking me if I have some sort of British citizenship and seem surprised that British council would hire and American. They are in no way upset, mind you, they are wonderful and cool as hell so far, but they seem to want to know how and why I am working for the British government.  I tell them British Council seemed more concerned with my resume than my passport.
I am going to an island today to look for a cheap place to stay.  I will go to a small village and try to get something small and inland away from the ferry terminal to save money.  I like the idea of taking a ferry to work across the open sea each day, and the island seems to have a lot of forest for hiking and camping maybe.
A guy on Craigslist HK was offering an apartment for $400, which is crazy low even if you are talking USD. An apartment for that much in Central Hong Kong island is basically like a $400 dollar apartment in Manhattan, very fishy.  I emailed to ask why it was so low and found out I needed to give $350 just to see the place, which immediately tells me I am dealing with a grifter.  I reported this asshole to Craigslist.  But the search continues.
Wish me luck, I love you guys.
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