We finally made it!! Hurra hurra! (insert fireworks and bangs and cracking noises here). Wow, I’m actually here. It seemed like it would take forever to get here. Our apartment is very small, but we will manage. The apartment block is a bit of a dive, but not really that worse than Orbost. The area is beautiful. We have only had a small look around, but from what we can see, we are very happy with. There are vending machines everywhere here, and there are not in normal places like Australia, they are just on the footpath butted up against the road. I think we counted about 20 on our 7min walk to the station. It’s crazy. None of them stock school girl panties, but I assure you my dear readers, as soon as I find one (and I’m making it my mission that I do) I will let you all know.
Well getting here was something I’d rather forget. We were 6kg over in Singapore and he almost charged us a whopping AU$140 for our crummy 6kg, but he let it slide at the last moment. The flight was horrible, didn’t get enough sleep and they woke us up at about 4am for breakfast, which wasn’t the best thing to have in your stomach when the turbulence hit during decent and worst of all, I never had enough time to defete the 2nd major monster in super Mario bros.
Customs were straight down the line “Do you have any cigarettes, alcohol, cannabis, amphetamines, crack cocaine, heroin”. Even if you don’t have anything, they can still make you feel guilty.
We finally found the right train carriage but we couldn’t decipher our allocated seats. We knew we took the wrong seats when we had four sleep deprived pissed off Japanese people grunt at us, motioning to get the fuck of their seats. At Shinjuku our mussels started to fail. Walking through a labyrinth of a station (over 2million people pass through Skinjuku station every day) our nerves were put to the test as we were trying to find the west exit and all of the signs read “to south exit” and “to new south exit”. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except that we were carting over 60kg of luggage. We were moving in spurts of 50m sections. My shoulders are still aching. The train ride to Monzen-nackkcho wasn’t too bad (apart from the luggage again) and we caught a taxi from the station. Even though we had a map, the driver still couldn’t find the place. You see Japan has this wonderful idea of town planning. They don’t have street names, unless they are major streets, and the house numbers aren’t sequencial, rather but a glorious method. First build, first number. So he dropped us off in the area and we wandered around for an hour or so before someone helped us find the place. It was directly behind the building we were standing in front of.
I am feeling a bit better today. We travelled into Shinjuku today and I picked up my arrival information from work so now we have the weekend to relax, get aquanted with our local area and try to master the art of non-verbal communication. Emily was a little upset, or should I say home sick when we first arrived, but I think the stress of arriving accompanied with the stress of the baggage had a contributing factor to her emotions. Regardless we had a bit of a cuddle and things are a bit brighter now. I think she still misses her friends and family though and quite rightly so. It’s a good thing that I have Emily with me though. Even though I’m usually a strong person, a foreign place can make someone feel very alone, but together we got off our asses, got down to the supermarket and she made a very delicious meal. Without her I could see myself eating pot noodle in the corner of the room crying.
I got some photos back from Singapore and got them scanned onto CD as well, so as soon as I have some free time I’ll put some of them onto the interest so you can take a look. I send off my first role of Super 8 to be developed in Singapore and I’m eagerly awaiting its arrival.
That about all I can be bothered writing at the moment, so stay cool and I’ll see all you crazy cats soon.
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