Neko-Lord in Nerd-Land: Japan 5.0

Samstag, 4. Juli 2015

Japan 5.0

Once again is this time of the year... that I'm in Japan and this time for a longer period.

- I was tired yesterday, so I UPDATE it now ;) -

So on July 3rd my new jorney started, it's Japan once again. But this time it's different, this time it's not just a trip of 2 or 3 weeks, this time it's the start of my working holiday visa for 1 year.

For the the first 2 weeks I will be doing the standard tourist package - Tokyo, Akiba, Shibuya, Odaiba, Ikebukuru, etc. etc.

Sure some old and already seen things won't be visited again, and some new are added like Morioka, Kyoto and other ones - thanks to the Japan Rail Pass - This service can only be used be foreigners and needs to be bought outside of Japan, you will get a voucher, which you trade in for the pass in Japan.

Getting to Japan was kinda business as usual, although my flight was canceled months ago - I ordered a flight with Austrian Airlines via Vienna with was changed to a Lufthansa flight via Frankfurt.

I had some bad luck with the entertainment program, I checked the program some days ago and was happy about the Avengers - Age of Ultron... My screen was not updated, so I had the movies and series of June and it also froze several times and needed to be reset billion times... - I watched a documentary about the camino in Spain, really touching - I watched because I will do trip like this, too - in 2 weeks I will start a pilgrimage on Shikoku to 88 temples, but we will talk about this later.

Finally the flight ended and I arrived at Tokyo Narita without having any sleep... bad idea, but I just couldn't get any sleep.

With my working holiday visa I had to use a diiferent queue in the immigration process. There was also another difference this time - the customs check was kinda long and annoying, I had my big backpack for trekking, a suitcase and tent, they checked everythig... and the one who checked looked somehow sad being unable to find anything... -.-

Then I was going to trade in my JR Pass voucher, and they said, it was not possible..., because I'm no temporary visitor, I stood still... after 15 minutes of talking I was able to convince the JR woman to give me the pass - lucky me

To get to Toyko I took the N'EX, now my lack of sleep finally started toshow up and it was 8AM in the morning and I had a whole day to go, you can imagine how heavy it was to "survive" the first day.

I hoped that it was possible to pre-check-in before 3PM, no way, only with an extra charge of 3.000 Yen I wouold have had the change to check-in 3 hours earlier, so I only dropped my stuff and went to Akiba.

It was really very hard, I was only able to go to the Shosen Book Tower, Book Off, Starbucks and Yodobashi Akiba - it was like walking around without realizing what I was doing, a trance like being somehow(?)

I ate at Chabuton, it's starting to become a tradition.

And I found this: a new Monsrter Hunter Artbook of the paleontology series

I returned to Akiba after the check-in and after having a sleep.

And then it happened, I found the vending machine of EVIL!
Although it has a great price for Mountain Dew - I love this taste - but this machine is greedy.
I inserted 1000 Yen und took 3 cans (130Y each) and then the machine gave 110 Yen back...
1000 - 3x130 = ...? correct, 110 not 610... at least the machine counts this way. I asked a worker near the machine, but it wasn't their machine, so I only could call the hotline, pas possible without mobile phone - a passerby - he was a saint - tried to help me, he called the customer service for me, although it didn't work, I was just touched so much by his will to help, I didn't care about the 500 Yen anymore. He went on and seconds later I just "punched" the machine in a very soft way... and guess what happened, I wanted to share it, but the passerby was gone already.