Welcome to my new blog! It’s been
three weeks in the making, but I’ve finally got enough time and energy to sit
down and bust this out. Alright, here we go:
Way too early on a Monday morning, Alexis, her
mother, her sister, and her step father met up with my father and me at PDX.
After some line waiting and then some goodbyes, we got on our way. Well,
through security at least. With some extra time before our flight, we grabbed a
semi-leisurely breakfast before going to our gate and boarding. The flight from
PDX to LAX was fine, and the four hour layover was made manageable by the fact
that there was hardly any waiting at all. I had last minute accounts to cancel
for my apartment in Eugene via phone before heading out of the country, and did
so while getting sent from one gate to another (almost as far apart as they
could be) before being sent back (this time actually as far as was possibly
while staying in the pedestrian zone of the airport) in the direction we had
come from (“hello again building 6’” we said as we speed-walked to building 7
from building 1 while I simultaneously listened to an automated voicing telling
me, yet again, that I “should listen carefully as the menu options have
changed”). Security was a pain as the
TSA agents were only half doing their jobs, but that was a necessary “airport
bring down” to equalize us after the extremely helpful lady behind the counter
got us sorted out. LAX to NRT was a surprisingly painless flight despite the
THREE INFANTS in our immediate vicinity. At first it was none, and then a
family of five or so got on bringing their ‘rascals’ (see: monsters), which
brought our area up to two infants. About five minutes later a flight attendant
came to the row ahead of us and actually asked a couple to move so that a
family could have the extra room provided by the bulkhead so their baby might
have room to roam about if he got fussy (as seemed to be the expected outcome).
Despite what may seem like a general hatred for children, I really do respect
the difficulty of flying with kids and feel worse for the parents than anyone
else, I just ALSO feel bad for me. That being said, the kids were quiet enough
that my earbuds drowned them out nicely (although I couldn’t seem to turn up
the volume enough to prevent my noticing the little feet pounding the back of
my seat frequently).
Arriving in Japan was a mixture of
excitement and exhaustion. Although I had slept probably four hours on the
flight, Alexis was unable to grab more than a nap of about 20 minutes. So
basically I brought the excitement and she the exhaustion. We had a 14 hour
layover in Japan, so we had already decided that we were going to jump on a
train to Tokyo, explore the crap out of it, and then jump on a train back to
the airport in time for our flight. After some tricky negotiating with a couple
of baggage lockers we headed down to the train station, in what I guess you
could call the basement of the airport (underbelly maybe?). We hurdled the
language barrier and, tickets in hand, headed to our platform. It was about
6:00 pm local time and we ended up riding into Tokyo with a good number of high
school aged kids clearly just getting done with school or studying and some
business men. The train ride was longer than either of us expected and Alexis
was actually able to sleep for another half an hour or so. It’s hard to
estimate the exact amount of time that she slept because it wasn’t all in one
block. Every once in a while a train would go sprinting past in the opposite
direction at something like the speed of “DEAR GOD!” and wake Alexis up. The
incredible volume, suddenness, and pressure change in the train that went along
with this happening made it incredibly hard to ignore/be prepared for, unless
of course you were ANYBODY ELSE on the train. Despite the sensational assault,
none of the other passengers even seemed to notice, let alone jump.
We arrived at Tokyo Station, hopped
off the train and were immediately in the way of every single person in Japan. What
I mean to say is that if we turned to go in the direction we thought would lead
us to the exit, we managed to do so at precisely the wrong time, which would
send a shockwave of people breaking stride and looking confused as far as we
dared to look in any direction. We were more in the way trying to navigate the
crowds than just standing still and clinging confusedly to ourselves.
Eventually we escaped the startlingly clean train station and headed for, well,
for anything and nothing. We basically just thought “Okay, here’s the station,
we need to be back in no more than 7 hours” and started walking. Insanely wide
streets, large crowds, pachinko parlors, and a huge number of bicycles that no
one, seriously no one, bothers to lock up; coming out of Eugene I found that
last one to be particularly unsettling. After about an hour of walking around,
we decided to head over the Tokyo Tower. The only problem is that we had no
idea where it was. We didn’t even know vaguely which direction. Rising to the
challenge, I pulled out the Japanese Phrase
Book, marched up to a man minding his own business and tentatively squeaked,
in what was undoubtedly the worst Japanese the man has ever or will ever hear,
“Where is?” Pointing to a post card of the Tokyo Tower we had picked up a few
minutes before. I then pointed in various directions looking confused, so that
he might know all I was looking for was him to point. He did point, and even
said a few things. I cleverly responded to his remark (whatever it happened to
be) with a “Far…is?” “Hai” he responded. And at that we were off like confused,
touristy lightning. We later found out that the Tokyo Tower was something like
three miles away, and with the winding twisty path we took we probably made it
something like a 7 or 8 mile round trip. Along the way we stopped to have some
sushi and hot sake. That was probably the best decision we’d made all night. We
got a sampler platter and tried everything on the plate. All of it was good,
some great, except for something that looked like a bundle of tiny orange tongues,
and something we would later decide could only have been starfish. DON’T. EAT.
STAR. FISH. EVER. I figured spitting out my mouthful of disgusting onto the
plate would probably have been quite offensive, so I just swallowed it and
tried to wash down the flavor with sake. I’m a big believer in trying most everything
at least once. Thank god I can check that one off the list.
Eventually we did reach the Tokyo
Tower, which was pretty stellar, but at this point we were both staring to fade
and still have many hours before the first train back to the airport. We also
didn’t have enough cash to really take care of ourselves, and the only ATM that
would accept cards issued outside the country would not give anything smaller
than the equivalent of about $120. Anyway, quite a bit more than we wanted to
get out of my already pathetic bank account and more hassle later with having
to exchange the excess of yen to either USD or Indonesian Rupiah. The decision
to not get money would probably turn out to be a mistake, but oh well. We got
back to Tokyo Station, and the city around us was pretty much closed by this
time (12:30 or so). We figure, we can just slip into the train station and
sleep for a few hours while we wait for our train. This may seem like a silly
decision, but Alexis was all but dead on her feet. She forgot where we where
and what we doing, and had trouble answering really basic questions. After we got
to the train station, we sat down and pretty much immediately fell asleep. About
an hour later we got woken up by a security guard, and fairly long story short
we were put back out on the street and told to come back at four when they
opened up for morning service. This was worrying because we had a round trip
ticket and had gotten it punched to get into the station to sleep. Would we be
able to get back in for our 5 o’ clock to the airport? There were more pressing
matters, however: Where the hell can we go to sleep? The only place that was
opened that wasn’t a convenience store mocking our ‘out of country’ ATM cards
was a McDonald’s. Sure. So we went in, scrounged together the yen we had left,
and bought Alexis a burger and fries. Desperately trying to stay awake we
played scopa, a card game, as well as a memory game that we sometimes play.
This lasted until about 3:00 am when the 24 hour McDonalds closed. False.
Advertising. They’ll be hearing from my brother/lawyer! Back to the streets for
us. After another hour or so of really really unpleasant waiting and walking,
the Tokyo Station opened back up, I schmoozed our way through the gate with
already punched tickets, and bam we were in and… well, waiting for another hour
for our train to get there.
We slept;
pretty much all the way back to the airport on a nearly empty train.
Begrudgingly we paid again to ransom our bags from the lockers (apparently if
you get a locker for a “Day” that means until midnight. Bastards.) and then
made our way through security, immigration, and then it was on to Jakarta!
Which was really stressful and unpleasant!
The flight was really nice,
actually, but getting there we immediately told that we were supposed to have
either fifty dollars cash or 450,000 rupiah. We mentioned that we didn’t have
that much cash and the lady looked confused… She directed us to another airport
employee who was straight up irritated. She literally sighed when we told her
that we didn’t have the cash. Not a normal sigh either, but a really
exasperated one. After a surprisingly long walk to the ATM we got our rupiah
and paid for our Visas. We headed out of the airport, into a bus and around in
a semi-circle, and then back into a different terminal. After waiting in line
and getting up to the counter, we found out that without the card holder
present, we couldn’t get on our plane. Carrick had purchased this particular
leg of the trip, so we were pretty much screwed. After much frantic running
about trying to find a way around this snag/contact Carrick to get his card
number so that they would let us on the plane (they said that because I was his
brother they would let us get on if we just had the card number). Nothing we
did worked, so we just ended up having to buy two more tickets to get us to
Bali. Upon landing in Bali, the best part of our trip began. Two nights and one
beautiful day in an island paradise was really the solution to all of our
stress and jetlag. We slept in, swam in the pool, went and walked around Bali,
went and swam in the ocean and then back to the hotel for another pool swim,
dinner, and early to bed. The next morning we headed out to the airport and
then on to Timor.
So that was
our trip, and much like this post it was entirely too long but still quite
enjoyable. I feel like most people aren’t going to want to keep reading, so
I’ll stop here for now and continue my Timor adventures in a separate post.
Keep things more manageable for all my lovely readers.
Slรกinte,
-Connor
