Arriving to Japan

The train ticket is printed all in Japanese, including the destination city, the rail line and train "route" name.


Asking around is pretty much the only way to go. And since leaving the airport, the proportion of white people is no more than 1%.

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Sushi 3 times a day? I think I can live with that ...

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I'm on the bullet train to Kyoto. Whizzing thru Tokyo at lightning speeds, and yet the city just won't go away, it's so huge! I'm getting a bit of a fast-forward preview version of what's to come when I come back to Tokyo. And it's looking rock & roll!

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Out of the city now. All I see is hieroglyphs, thatched "pagoda-style" roofs, flooded rice fields, and peasants in triangular hats. I'm in Asia, baby!

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The taxi driver speaks no English. NO INGRISH! Had to pull over and ask a group of 4 ppl on the street to clarify directions, and call Minos so they could explain it to him in Japanese. Phew.

Part of the problem here is that there's not always a street name where you're going. Only the major ones have names, not alleys & and side streets - and there's definitely no house number. It took Minos 5 times asking in Japanese to find my hostel. This is gonna be hard.

So how do people find their way? Basically you must have a map with the place marked exactly on it. This reminds me of the game of Go, where the "traditional" way of remembering a sequence of moves is by drawing a board with numbered stones on it, instead of labeling the positions (the latter would be SO much easier)...