After a ridiculous flight where I had the good fortune to be seated in front of a child who didn't know how to keep her feet from kicking the back of my seat for more 10 minutes at a time during a nine hour flight, I finally landed in Tokyo.
I wasn't sure how everything would go from this point on. While I do have a loose itinerary of where I will be on what days, I have been foolish enough to not reserve any rooms in any of the places I intend to visit. This foolishness stems from two desires. The first is that all the cheapest places don't even accept reservations, let alone credit cards. So what does that mean? I suppose that it means that I am cheap, and I hope to scam whatever resources I can from honest, goodhearted, and gullible Japanese folk. (I would soon find out that it was I who was the jackass, and I would have my stupidity revealed for all to see very soon.) The second reason that I wanted to abandon any sense of responsible planning is that I wanted this trip to be a bit of an adventure. That is, I fel that the best way to learn about any new place is to throw the guidebooks to the wind, and let my feet explore and discover whatever might cross my path. (To the keen-eyed, it would seem that these two goals of being cheap and adventurous are not especially compatible, unless I was really willing to sleep outdoors, a test that I have not had the luck to face... yet.)
The one thing that I did plan, however, was to purchase a JR Rail Pass. The pass allows me unlimited access to the national train system, and I can go as many places that I care to squeeze in within two weeks. If I get around Japan like my outline of an itinerary says, this should pay for itself by the third or fourth day. This neat option is only given to foreigners, and Japanese citizens cannot purchase it. To make it more difficult, and to require planning, they make people buy this pass outside of Japan. So, contrary to my character of jetissoning any planning, I did have to know about this and purchase it a couple of weeks ago.
A funny thing happened as a result of this minor planning necessity. When FedEx finally delivered the pass to me, they didn't bother to knock on my door to check if I was home, and instead just left a notice telling me that I would have to pick up my package at the FedEx office. But of course, it wasn't that easy. I had to call the office and let them know that I was going to come and pick it up. When I called them, I informed them that I didn't have any identification with my current address because I had just recently moved there. The nice lady on the other side of the phone told me that I could take my passport. My passport?! Wasn't that thing set to expire? Indeed! So I jumped up, and grabbed my passport to check the expiration date. It was set to expire while I was scheduled to be in Japan. So besides having to pick up this FedEx package, I also had to run to the post office to renew my passport.
It so happens that the post office near my home does not do passports, and since I was set to leave in a short time, I would have to go to a central passport office to expedite the whole process. Well, in New York City, there must be such an office, right? So there is. But it was booked, and I had to go to Connecticut to complete this whole process. Well, I suppose those are the sorts of things that happen when you don't like to plan.
Back to Japan. In addition to picking up the completed JR Rail Pass, I also wanted to pull out a lot of cash money from the ATM. I tried to withdrawl a lot, but the machine wouldn't let me, so I pulled out a little, thinking I could go to any ATM once in Tokyo to pull out more money. Unfortunately, this is not the case. When I went to several different ATMs in Tokyo, they told me that my card was unreadable. Was it possible that in transit, with everything rustling around in my pocket, that my card was irreparably damaged, leaving me with about $100 for my two weeks in Japan? I was starting to worry.
Before leaving the airport, I also wanted to rent a phone so that it would be easy to get in touch with people that I wanted to meet. I knew that I had set enough money aside for this luxury, however, none of the companies that rent phones would give me one. The reason was that I was using a bank debit card with a credit card logo, and this is not a real credit card. I didn't have a proper credit card, so screw off! Hmm... I am not that intelligent of a person, so I cannot fathom why a debit card would not be usable in this situation, but I started to wonder how many other firms in Japan would follow this same sort of policy. Hotels perhaps? This coupled with the fact that I seemed to be unable to take out cash from any ATM had me fearing the worst on my first day.
These were the things that I was thinking about during my train ride from the airport to the Tokyo train station. I wasn't certain about exactly which train services would be covered by the train pass, since there are many private lines throughout Japan that serve different areas. In fact, most of the Tokyo subway system is not covered by this JR Pass (although a very significant portion is).
One interesting thing I got to see one the train ride into Tokyo was the new Tokyo Sky Tree. This massive structure was not here the last time I was in Japan. Apparently it is one of the tallest man-made structures on earth. Big deal. After seeing it from the train, I now feel no need to see it up close.
When I got to the Tokyo train station, I decided to break the 10,000 yen bill (equivalent to $100)that the ATM gave me at the airport. (An interesting feature about Japan is that even the smallest convenience stores take these bills as payment, whereas in America, most places don't take bills over $20, an American practice that makes no sense to me; money is money after all, isn't it.) One the ways that I had learned i might be able to go on the cheap here is to store my backpack (my only luggage) in a coin locker at many of the main train stations, and I quickly learned that these coin lockers don't take large bills. After getting this weight off my back, I decided to walk around Tokyo, looking for a hotel, an ATM that would give me money, and some food.
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