Saturday 19 March 2005

Japan Holiday

19th March, 2005


Arrived in Narita (Tokyo airport) late at night, with no accommodation plans. Somehow managed to organise a local hotel which had a shuttle bus. Spent the next hour watching Japanese TV and trying to figure out the crazy robot toilet. Later, went up to the bar on the top floor for a snack and a scotch to celebrate making it here in one piece.

20th March, 2005

Caught the shuttle bus back to the airport to get a train into the city (about 40-60 mins). Found our way to Akihabara (Electric Town) to get a new camera, here's the first shot:



After this we got back to Central to catch the shinkansen (bullet train) to Okayama, where Jack was staying. It only took a few hours, which is pretty good when you consider it's 600km away almost at the other end of the country.

We arrived in Okayama at night with no directions (sounds familiar) and no easy way to contact Jack. We figured the best idea would be to find an internet cafe and hope he was checking his email. After getting directions off the info guy at the station we found the cafe in a deserted mall at the other end of town.

Jack was not at home, but thankfully got the email on his fancy Japanese future phone and we organised to meet back at the station. He took us to a club that he was meeting some of his JET friends at.



Turned out to be a pretty big night, and we ended up getting okonomoyaki at a local all-night cafe. This was taken at 7am:



21st March, 2005

We caught the train to Jack's house in Seto to crash. That afternoon we came back into town to visit the Okayama Castle. Seems like every town we visited had an ornate castle like this.



That night we went for dinner in Seto to a restaurant where nothing was in English and we had to guess what everything on the menu was. Each table had a small gas cooker built into the centre, and you were served plates of sliced raw meat and got to cook it yourself. With Jack's decent translating skills and random guessing we ended up with a good meal.

22nd March, 2005


More to come...