Another video from the makers of the Carl Sagan hit ‘ A Glorious Dawn’…

Hey fans. All of you have probably noticed I’ve not been posting recently. This is because of a rather nasty cold I managed to pick up on my way back from the land of the rising sun. That and my laptop died half way through the trip.

I have however recovered nicely and am back on home turf. To make up for my absence I’ll treat you to a few nice stories each day of my trip to Japan. One or two each day. It’d take me months to write everything down, so I’ll settle with little impressions for now while I organise my thoughts.

So here goes.. the story of my 2 week trip to Japan…

1. Arrival

I arrived with my sister somewhere around 6 PM, flitting through the cold and dingy clouds of Narita airport. Having not smoked a single cigarette in about a day I was anxious to get out of the airplane and hurried my posterior towards the inevitable humiliating security. The Japanese custom official questioned me extensively before I was allowed to enter and have my passport stamped with the tourist visa stamp declaring I had permission to land in Japan. As soon as I was through passport control, me and my sister hunted for an ATM to get some cash to get us to our hotel. And cigarettes. Oh the sweet death stick, how I have suffered for thee.

I procured some cash and rushed to the little counter of the only store on the rather grubby concourse and asked for a packet of Marlboros when it hit me. Cigarettes are CHEAP in Japan. For just less than £2 (or 2 Euros – the exchange rate was nearly par at the time) I had myself a packet of Marlboro smokes. After going into a designated smoking cubicle and relieving my addiction of it’s bite I finally realised that I was in Japan. Everyone smokes there. After thoroughly drenching my clothes in the lovely scent of exhaled tobacco I rushed back to where my healthy counterpart was standing and we managed to wrangle us a spot on the Airport Limousine – which is basicly a glorified bus service. And we were off! Off to Tokyo proper and our little hotel in Ginza.

2. A first glimpse of Tokyo

I had just about enough energy left to stay awake on the bus journey. I had not slept in over 24 hours and the incessant droning of the bus’s engines almost made me drop off into the lap of the Japanese bloke sitting next to me. Our stop was the last one for the Airport Limousine, so I was extremely happy when we finally arrived.We hailed a taxi and got to our little hotel in Ginza where we would be staying for the next four days.  Ginza is the premier shopping district for everything haut-couture so my sister was looking forward to browsing the shops.

Stepping into the taxi, I was struck by that nothing had changed. The 1980s cars, the taxi driver with immaculate gloves and a face mask and not a word of English in the cab. I did my best ‘to the hotel please’ in Japanese and off we were. It was bitterly cold and it started raining by the time we two, utterly exhausted had booked into our tiny hotel room and finished unpacking.

The next morning we decided to go get us a coffee at a local coffeeshop and went on our first exploration tour of Tokyo. Having not spoken Japanese for years I rustily asked for a map at the front desk and we moseyed towards the nearest subway station. I was already dreading this as I mentally tried to recall all the kanji for places of interest.. Ginza, Shinagawa, Takanawa, Meguro, et al. My surprise couldn’t be bigger once I saw that everything on the subway was in two languages – Japanese and English vying for a top spot. Adverts and T.V. still appeared to be exclusively in Japanese, but most other things are signposted well. Things had definitely changed.

More to come soon!

After a discussion about racism this black fellow (left in the video) decides to beat up an old man. Bad mistake. You just messed with Epic Beard Guy, dawg!

People who know me know why I post this video.

This is why you shouldn’t wear sunglasses inside.