Barking Dogs
Saturday, September 8th, 2007Good evening, friends. I write you from the future. You see, here in Tokyo it is 8:55 PM, so technically I stayed up all night last night partying. And by partying, I mean sleeping. One of the perks of having a mom who was a flight attendant is that you get to fly in leftover empty seats for dramatically low prices. Consequently, my mother and I flew from LAX to Narita, Japan in style. Just before the flight, two people dropped out of first class and we were forced to take their seats. The cool thing about the front row of first class is that the seats fully recline, and by fully I mean you are lying flat on your back. It was from this position that I fell asleep, and the day technically ended as we flew away from the sun. I woke up today and watched the tape of Disturbia I had accidentally neglected before taking my long nap. Shia steals the spotlight once again.
After the flight we took a bus to Shinjuku station. After searching for 10ish minutes for any hotel that might have taxis lined up in front of it, we were lucky enough to find an empty taxi in the busy traffic. I asked the driver to take us to ‘Takanobaba’ to the ‘Sunroute Hoteru’ which he did not seem to know the location of, so instead I asked him to take us to ‘Takanobaba Eki’ which means Takanobaba station. According to my papers, our hotel is supposed to be right across the street from there. The driver still seemed pretty confused, but began driving and entering lots and lots of data into his GPS unit. At first I was able to keep track of where we were heading by comparing my map to his GPS display, but eventually I lost track completely, and began to panic. My mother remained blissfully ignorant of my fears for the next fifteen minutes, as I silently prayed that we were not heading in the opposite direction of our destination. My fears were soon eradicated as my mom pointed out the Shinjuku Station to our right. The taxi driver pulled over and pointed at the fare. I put his payment in his little payment tray and took my bags out of the trunk. As I closed the trunk, I was surprised to see the taxi driver getting out of the car and walking up to a guy standing at the corner. He talked to the guy briefly before the guy nodded and started walking down the street, and the taxi driver signaled for us to follow the guy, who took us to our hotel. The taxi driver helped us out after he was already paid! If you are not surprised, go to New York and see how often that happens.
Once we got settled, I went off to find internet access since there was no wireless access in our room. I ran into three vending machines at the end of the hall. The first machine had a bunch of watery looking sports drinks, the second machine was filled with Japanese beers, and the third machine had various heated dinner options, such as spaghetti. I took some pictures of the machines and headed to the lobby, where I found a computer with internet access. Just one lonely computer. Whoops. Mom just found out we can get an LAN cable at the front desk, so now I’m typing directly onto the internet. This is much better. Well, my dogs are barking, so I’m going to sleep.
