first day in japan insights
first day in japan insights
Before I got to Japan, I experienced the longest “day” (as measured by sunup to sundown) in my life - roughly 23 hours. I was a zombie last night. Tried to post this, wrote a few paragraphs and gave it up. Lemme see if I can remember what I wrote. Thursday night, I spoke to my mom and dad. Dad got a defibrillator a few months ago, it went off for the first time the other nite. He was just sitting at the table, reading the paper, sunddenly BAM there’s a jolt. I asked him if it detected wi-fi hotspots, and he surprised me to tell me that it really does send emails to his doctor via a monitoring station next to his bed which does wirelessly get updates from the device in his chest. My dad, the six million dollar man. SIx million dollars doesn’t take you very far any more. The TSA gauntlet at DIA wasn’t too bad, but watching people have to choose which of their toiletries they would keep was pretty weird.. they let you have things in only 3.4 ounce containers, and they all have to fit in a quart-sized ziploc. Mom had told me that the Red Wings and the Pistons were playing (playoff action this late, I guess, i’m so not an avid sports fan) but when I got dresed Friday morning I thought it would be a good idea to wear my Red WIngs 1997 Western Conference Champs T shirt that I bought in a detroit airport. I figured as long as i got out of Colorado safely it would be cool, shouldnt get my ass kicked too bad. Turned out to be a good plan, two flight attendants on the first airplne commented on it, one because he was from Farmington (I’m from Farmington Hills) and the other seemed dismayed at how well they were playing against San Jose (she struck me as a california girl). Then as we smoked the last of our cigarettes outside the Seattle airport, a TSA employee turned out to be from Dearborn Heights. I asked her if this very cloudy, overcast sky was typical of Seattle. She said yes, at least from November til April. So Seattle is like Detroit without the snow. Not my cup of tea, that kinda shit makes me either homicidal or suicidal. The plane flight from Seattle to Narita Airport was about 10 hours. They had a LCD screen on the back of each seat so you could choose between several audio or video programs. The video had some 45 channels, and i ended up watching an edited version of Children of Men about 4 times. Several crucial things had been edited out - i never heard the radiohead song that was on the soundtrack, for instance. They also edited out the part right after the midwife gets taken from the bus.. I won’t spoil what is missing, but you can guess. The LCD has one screen that shows where you are in relation to the trip, giving updates on the temperature outside the airplane (as low as -64 F), time at destination, how long we’ve been up, expected arrival time. Basically a constantly updated electronic answer to the questions “Are we there yet? when will we get there?” etc. I don’t know exactly how they do it, I suspect some weirdness of impedance mismatch, but the airlines provide free headphones (real electrical ones now, not the lame pneumatic ones they used to) that are pretty much useless connected to my ipod.. not even worth stealing, and my headphones sound much better in the armset stereo. Drinks across the pacific are complimentary, I have a new favorite girly drink, amaretto with orange juice. Not quite an amaretto sour, but pretty close. We got two meals of chicken something or other on our flight, the last one finishing less than half hour before we landed. Lots of new things in japan, just a few highlights from driving from the airport to the naval base..
Dalton took three years of Japanese in high school, but didn’t use it for a couple years, and is nearly as lost as we are in reading the signs.
- Yen is roughly 117 yen to a dollar, so the prices you see in the stores are basically posted in pennies.
Found some mosubi in a convenience store in the airport. They’re about 100 yen or so (we were in a Lawson’s convenience store later and they were 105 yen). I ate two on th spot, gave one to michelle. I feel like i’m in Hawaii. In fact, last night i was having some very strong deja vu about this place, what we were eating and drinking.. Watched a little bit of Blade II on AFN (“american forces network”, dalton says, not “armed forces network”) This is basically like Waikiki except that there is no allowance for American - it is all in japanese, and so far the pictures are a godsend. My mosubi was salmon, and when dalton asked how i was sure, i said the color. It was salmon, by the way.
There are lots of well-lit drink vending machines all over the place, and you can buy cigarettes from similarly well-lit machines.
the bathroom in the Lawson’s convenience store had a bidet built in, with lots of instructions in Japanese. I never felt like i needed a lesson in using a toilet before. I bought a bottle of “Lemon water” (aka lemonade to us american folk)
motorcycles are allowed to lane splice, and if you hang your arm out the window and they take you out, it’s your fault (or so Dalton says) The freeway we have been on so far was a toll road, and there was one part where several lanes compressed to fewer lanes and no lines to indicate who was supposed to merge with who. Chaos Lanes, I call them.
On the way from the airport we passed two massive ferris wheels. I have no idea why they are into ferris wheels. Michelle says that she recognized a few things that she’s seein in Final Fantasy
Porn stores look pretty much the same wherever you go. Japan has some rather odd kinks. There is supposedly porn about women on their periold. eww. Dalton knows about the used panty vending machines (microwave for olfactory wonderfulness, supposedly) but he doesnt know anything about shot glasses with people fucking on them. He did offer to take us to a fetish store, I can hardly wait.L
Dalton has a car, and the first thing he asked about when we got to the car was whether i brought anything to connect an ipod into a car because his radio doesn’t work, but his cassette does. Fortunately for us, Michelle insisted in my grabbing the belkin thingie and cassette adapter, so within a few moments were were listening ti Detachable Penis as we drove out of the airport. We were listening to Radio Dalton, so a few songs later we were listening to Black Sabbath “Paranoid”. Later we listened to Radio Bob, shuffling up from my ipod. I expect that Dalton and I will be infecting each others ipods with new music.
When we got to tne base, we checked into our hotel (stars and stripes newspaper headline “Bloggers up in arms over new Army rules” - new regs at www.stripes.com, supposedly they can’t show any pics of “roadside bomb attacks, images of troops killed in action, and any shots of base security measures”). We went to the bowling alley/pizza place next to the Navy Lodge, bought a large garbage pizza with everything including pineapple for $15, and three coronas at $3.25 apiece. Next Dalton and walked over to the Navy Exchange and bought a six of rolling rock (3.75), hornsby apple cider and a bottle of merlot that wasnt Fetzer or Gallo for about $8.99.. Dalton says that the Navy supports alcoholism with these ridiculously low prices. Dalton said it was weird seeing Michelle with “blonde” hair. I said let’s be real - that’s nicotine. He didnt give her too much grief for that. Neither of is really craving it really at all. Too much excitement at a new environment. I did see a japanese woman on the plane who had a patch on her arm - prolly the only way for severely addicted nicotine fiends. Stop signs here are red triangles (think yield sign) that say “stop” in the middle of them. If you speed more than 30 km/hr over the speed limit, it’s a felony. Face masks are not uncommon because of SARS. Actually, dalton says that the Japanese wear them out of courtesy because they are sick. (returns from the bathroom) so far every faucet i have used makes you press the lever down rather than up to make the water come out. Cars here have the driver side on the right hand side. Yesterday was the first time i have ever been in such a car It’s 8:00 Am. About a half hour ago, while typing this, I heard a speaker play taps, with something else earlier than that. Now they’re playing the US national anthem, followed by something else that i suspect is the Japanese national anthem. This base (Atsugi) is colocated with the Japanese AIr Force (i forget what it’s called, Dalton’s asleep, will have to update later)