Day 1 - Planes, Trains, Automobiles

Mum and Dad wanted the pics from my trip. Theres about 3200 in total, so I'll just put up ones which tell the story I guess. Also I think if I dont put it down in text soon, then I'll forget stuff, so this is a good way to remember. Day 1 - Well by the time we arrived at Narita Airport it was around 7pm from memory. The thing is with Narita airport, its nowhere near Tokyo. In fact its nowhere near anything. You get out of the plane, into a arrival section, which you then clear customs, and you load up into an automated Bus service, which then actually takes you to the terminal. This is a far cry from the last airport we stopped at which was Gold Coast. Narita Airport has its own railway station inside it. In fact, you step off the plane, into the auto-bus, and then into the trainstation. You never actually see the sky. The trainstation is 3 levels, and at this stage pretty imposing. Theres relatively few english signs, but we found the JR office to approve our passes, and also a Softbank phonestore to get a japanese SIM card. The woman at the JR office, sortof told us the train to catch. Sortof. The thing is, the tokyo train system, is so amazingly convuluted, even most of the locals cant work it out. So we ended up hoping on a train, which was more or less headed in the right direction, but we needed to change trains 3 times, to get to our destination. Also, the train we mistakenly hopped on, was a "stop all stations" train. We sort of made the right stops, and eventually discovered the correct trainline to get to our apartment. To give you an idea, the last train swap, was one line out of a possible 6. Turns out we hopped on a train that didnt stop at the station we wanted, so we hopped out at the next stop and caught a taxi. Eventually we got to the hotel. After 2.5 hours. We were to meet up with one of Chris's friends, Suzuki, at an izakaya, which is whats known as a traditional japanese bar. I cant remember the name of the place. So we dumped out stuff in the "Leaf Court" hotel room, and trudged back to our station. This is the road just outside our place, its about 11pm at night. We were to meet him just down the corner from the South exit of the Shibuya trainstation. Shibuya is a reasonably busy area, so uhh, this is the sort of foot traffic you will find, till dawn, when it gets busier.

Suzuki found us, then led us to the bar. The following picture, I will explain. The thing that looks like KFC, pretty much is. Its karage chicken, which we thought would be best for matt to try first., the thing in the middle of the table, is deep fried pasta, which, for whatever reason, matt and chris loved, and i thought the concoction was too odd for consumption. The plate just in front of me, is empty, but it was horse., the bowl in front, which turned out to be my face drinking food, is raw squid, in wasabi, and cucumber, and some leaf thing. Theres a bunch of stuff also eaten, which i can't remember. the box, with the 3 small dishes, is complementary, and contains, from left to right, (pink thing) no idea, tasted extremely fishy, (the white stuff) is sortof something in between potato salad, and mashed potato, and lastly sea urchin. All super tasty. The price, everything on the table, including the beer and stuff already eaten, would add up to about $25.

There was a lot more beers, I had my first ever sake, that didnt taste like jet fuel, Matt discovered Shochu, and Japan learned that an idiot white person wanted to mix coke with it. Then to top off, we "Return to the Forest". I've no idea what this cocktail is, other than it looks cool i guess, it has no alcoholic taste, yet, hits you really hard.

That pretty much slowed up the night, and instead of returning to the forest, we all just wanted to return to the hotel room.So we did, we tried walking, and got about half way, until chris decided he couldnt go on, and instead of leaving a man behind, we just all got a cab. Suzuki was I guess somewhat mis-informed of our arrangements, so, uhh, had to sleep in the small space between our beds, and the front door. What a champion. And so ended our first day.