First Contact part I

I honestly have no idea where to start...

Okay, so I'm now in Kyoto in a lovely, if small, room in my new dormitory. It's a 30 minute walk from campus and sits in the middle of the most confusing suburb known to man. Even the taxi driver got lost...

Anyway, I'll start at the beginning.

Mark and I were at the airport for about 8, giving us plenty of time to get on the flight to Frankfurt. Nothing to report there. From Frankfurt, and a simple McDonald's with Caroline, we got ready for our 10 hours 50 minutes of air time. The flight was a good one, I guess, with plenty to do on the little back-of-the-seat computers we had, such as films in Japanese, German or English including Star Trek (that film is dull after so many views, even in Japanese) and Night at the Museum 2. There were also some cool Japanese radio stations to listen to, all courtesy of Lufthansa and thus heavily advertising Lufthansa's flights. Meals were okay, but they remembered I was a veggie to they did well.

I didn't sleep. At all. God knows I tried.

Now, have you ever played Half Life 2? If so, you will have a good idea of what checking in at Kansai International Airport was like. A quick ride in a monorail, which talked to us as we travelled over the airport, followed by queueing in huge, grey halls, in front of desks with cameras that followed you which were staffed by sullen, uniformed staff in face masks. It was terrifying. Signs about said they were scanning our temperatures for the telltale signs of swine flu. However, I couldn't see anything that might be doing such a scan, and in many ways that was worse. Incidentally, my temperature today is 35.2 degrees Celsius, which is a good sign. Just thought you might like to know.

Anyway, we then had our luggage checked, with questions such as 'How much cash do you have on you right now?' (thanks Mum for the note which told me!) and 'Is any of this illegal, at all?', and then we found our way to the nearby station, where we were able to decipher (with the help of a button labelled 'English') the train ticket machine. After a brief call to Doshisha to say we were on our way, we went down to the station proper and waited for the train.

It was here that we became aware, if even a little, that we were in Japan.

The train was twelve minutes early, but we soon saw why. As soon as the passengers disembarked a small squad of uniformed cleaners hopped aboard and cordoned off the entrances before setting to work. This however, only took five minutes at most. What followed took our breaths away.

The seats turned around.

Perhaps that doesn't make it sound as impressive as it was. And it was; it was REALLY impressive. In England we have train seats that face both ways, so you may be sitting facing the direction you are moving in or maybe not. The train we were on (a 'Haruka-12', if you care) had all the seats facing forward, so when the train switched directions as it did at the airport the seats had to spin around in a funny little dance to face so that we would still be facing forward. We discovered later that you could spin the seats around yourself using a lever near the base, so you could have 4 seats facing in if you were a big group. So cool.

Anyway, the journey itself was incredible. We watched, amazed, as Osaka passed before us; towering buildings followed by squat ramen shops followed by farms, but never always in that order. We saw young men on scooters driving around tiny streets; bustling dual-carriageways full of morning traffic; women in kimonos with parasols; farmers in straw hats riding tractors as they tended their tiny patches of land; houses, everywhere. It was unbelievable. The Japanese family across from us must have thought it very amusing, these two young gaijin commenting on near everything, even skyscrapers the likes of which we'd seen before but with helipads that MUST have been designed for Gundams.

Kyoto Station was pretty weird, too. There were two exits from the platform, and so we decided to check both so we didn't miss our 'support'. The first exit we tried opened out into an electronics store, so we checked the other one. We were waiting around for a little while, not actually that fussed about missing possibly our only help in the whole country, when we were met by a trio of young Japanese women followed by an Australian fellow named... Matt? Sorry, dude, if you're reading this, I've had a lot of names to remember. But this little procession was in fact here only for Mark, and gave me a very confused look when I told them who I was. Didn't help, Mark, that you have two middle names, one of which is Peter. After a bit of deliberation, they checked the list again and found that I was to be 'supported' by a guy they called 'Kusabe-kun', who they assumed was searching somewhere else. After a short discussion, and a few apologies, two set off to find him, whilst we got to know Matt (?).

We met 'Kusabe-kun' not long later, when he came to join us after being found... somewhere. Mark and I parted ways, and Akihito Kusabe and I went off in search of my new accomodation.

Anyway, I'm going to take a break there as I haven't had lunch yet and don't want Qanat to close early as in my paranoia I fear it might. I'll be back in a bit.

Oh, and no I don't intend to translate all that into Japanese now. I mean, look at it!