Despite it being a bit late, I figured that I still had a lot of time to find a hotel and a place to sleep for the night. Over the last several hours, I had passed several homeless people who had set up camp under highway bridges or other places with covering. I hoped that I wouldn't take that route tonight, but I allowed it to be within the realm of possibilities. (It would be quite a burn on any country for one to visit and simply contribute to the homeless problem.)
As I started walking back from Yasakuni Shrine towards the Tokyo train station, it dawned on me how far I had actually walked. I figured it would take me any from 30 to 60 minutes to make my way back. And since I was out for an adventure, I was certain to not use the same path I had taken to get here.
It also dawned on me that I started to feel a bit more tired at this point. In fact, from the previous day when I woke up to to catch the plane to Japan, I probably only had a couple of sporadic hours of sleep, and by now it was at least 24 hours since I last had a real sleep. Hmm... Fun.
I happened across a Starbucks, where I knew I could get wifi, and maybe search online for the hotel that seemed to ellude me all night. I confirmed that they had wifi service, and bought a coffee. Reading through the brochure that the lady gave me, in order to get wifi service, I was required to give them my email address, then reply to an email that they would send me. This seems like a catch-22 because if you're not going to give me wifi yet, how am I supposed to check my email? I concluded that this catch-22 was just another example of Japanese madness. (However, recalling what someone had once told me, that most people in Japan have cell phones with email access (but perhaps not access to the rest of the internet), they might be expected to use this to get access to the rest of the internet while at Starbucks. Perhaps my previous assessment was too harsh, too soon.) In any case, I couldn't get any wifi, so I left, having wasted money on a coffee. But at least I got a coffee that would help me survive my search.
Walking down another road that I expected would get me to where I wanted to go, I came across a manga cafe. These are interesting stores in Japan where you go in and pay per hour to read comics, or surf the web. One curious feature of these stores is that some are open 24 hours, and so people actually use them as places to sleep. This might have been a real option for me except for the fact that this particular establishment closed at midnight. In any case, I could use the internet here to try to find what I might need.
But that's what a reasonable person would do. By this time, unbeknownst to me, madness had slowly crept into and consumed my mind. Instead of finding a reasonable place to sleep, I instead wrote nonsensical emails to friends both in Japan and America. I ended up finding that a fellow victim of insanity was also online, and so I chatted with him a bit. Reflecting with a cogent mind now, I cannot pinpoint the source of the madness, but besides the other factors that surely contributed, like too much coffee, not enough sleep, and stress and anxiety over my current situation, I supppose that the most violent contributor to this madness was lonliness. Besides what very limited conversations I had with locals to help me in various ways, I was alone in a country whose language I did not speak, and who did not speak my language. In order to combat this lonliness induced madness, I resorted to reaching out to friends and chatting instead of doing what was necessary: finding a hotel. Communicating with someone, even if for only a little while, was worth the gamble of sleeping on the streets.
After spending almost two hours doing this, I did not find a reasonable hotel in the area. I felt that I had to stay local because my stuff was in a locker in Tokyo station, and the trains stop running at midnight. I started on my trek, deciding that i should find a hotel before getting my stuff. This decision didn't matter much, though, because once I stepped outside of the internet-manga cafe, it was pouring rain. Within moments I was drenched, without an umbrella, a jacket (it was just too hot and humid to walk around with the one I had), and without a place to sleep. Looking at the time slowly creeping closer to midnight, I felt the urgency weigh on me. I was running through the rain, trying to find any hotel anywhere.
When I couldn't stand the rain anymore, I decided to jump into the subway and just get my stuff to Tokyo station. At this point, any hotel would have to do. Well, not any....
Perhaps because I was too nervous to focus, I couldn't find any hotel outside and near Tokyo station. The only one I found was the Four Seasons. Not being terribly cultured, I had heard that the Four Seasons was fancy, but I didn't know how fancy. I walked in, and asked the front desk if they had any open rooms. He looked on his computer, then punched a bunch of numbers into a hand calculator, and showed me the number that popped up. I told him thank you, and would continue my search elsewhere. As luck would have it, he seemed to see something in my gait as I walked away, and called out to me. He informed me that there was a more reasonable hotel just across the street and down a ways. At least I had a lead.
But a lead isn't very much if you can't navigate the streets. It clearly wasn't across the street, and I got lost, and ran around in circles around the same blocks over and over again without finding the place. Time was running out, and I decided that I had to go get my stuff from the coin locker, even though I didn't have a place to put it. (Really, if I was screwed, it probably would have been better to keep it in the locker, but I was way beyond thinking straight by this point. In fact, I was seriously considering the Four Seasons. Afterall, shouldn't we spoil ourselves no and again?) Then outside of the train station, still being drenched by the rain, I saw a neighborhood map. It plotted different points of interest, including the hotel that I was looking for. Apparently I did not go far enough down the street on my first search. Without getting my bags, I ran to find the hotel. It was just where the guy at the Four Seasons said it would be, but like I said, my brain wasn't hearing things right. I asked if they had a room, and they did. It was about one fifth of the price that the Four Seasons had offered. I took it.
I ran upstairs to my new room, and dropped everything off in this oversized closet. (Later, when I laid down in the bed, being as large as I am, my feet hung off the edge of the bed.) I ran back to the Tokyo train station just before it was going to close shop, picked up my stuff, and made the final trek back to the hotel room for the night.
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