Japan

Although it would be fun to leave the bath house experience hanging out there, untold, I think I should quickly fill in the detail. It seems a long time ago now but it was only last week I was standing out side the bath house door in my special pjs wondering if I was meant to get undressed or not before going in and how do I go about pretending I know what I’m doing? It had been over thirty six hours since I had last showered, so was in need of a wash.

I had briefly read a lonely planet about the edict while still in Australia I felt I had the basic concept under control, you bathe on a stool with a shower head and a bucket of water making sure to remove all of the soap before getting in the hot tub. So with this valuable knowledge I dropped the daks and went in. Once in two other blokes in there hardly took any notice and I went about my business. When I was about to get in the hot tub one of the blokes grunted and pointed at the sauna, this wasn’t in the guide book! I obliged and went in and sat down in the steam and to my relief was not followed in by the grunting man. I stayed in as long as I could stand and then exited to rinse before the hot tub. By now the grunting man had left and I was free to relax after a long day of sight seeing. Once I’d had enough I jumped out to rinse off before heading out to get changed for dinner.

However, as I sat down the friendly bloke who helped me work out what I was meant to be doing in the locker room earlier arrived and walked over and started to scrub my back, with soap again (obviously he thought I had just sat down or was really dirty EH) not wanting to be rude I said thanks and then washed off the soap ready to leave. As I stood up ready to go he grunted and pointed to the hot tub and so in I went, again! By this stage I was so hot I must have looked like a tomato. In broken English I was told to open the door and stand in the cold air blowing past the 9th floor balcony next to the bath house. As I stood there the friendly Japanese bloke kept waving me to go out on the balcony, being a modest Aussie I did so with a towel wrapped around my waist so as not to scare the peak hour traffic driving by below. The traffic didn’t worry him, he joined me out there in all his glory and started waving to the passing traffic! Being very diplomatic and not wishing to cause an incident I lost my modesty and also waved to the traffic driving below. Then quickly got out of there before being arrested and deported…

The remainder of our trip to Japan involved taking the Yamanote line around to Shinjuku, Shibuya, Uneo and Tokyo checking out parks, shopping centre and tourist sights. We made it to Roppongi and ate rammen and visited the Tsukiji fish markets on the last day where there was tuna taller than Emily being carved up.

Emily excited about cherry blossums!

Well we have finally found an internet cafe that we can type an entry in english (its at the airport in the departure area, brought to you free by yahoo!)

After a crazy last week including hangovers and farewell dinners Emily and I boarded a flight to Sydney to meet our overnight plane to Tokyo. Dispite thinking we had plenty of time and dreaming of an hour relaxing in the Qantas lounge in Sydney by the time we arrived at the gate our flight was boarding! After being told the it was going to be 10 degrees and wind on our arrival i began to wish i had changed out of my shorts and into the longpants (there is no good place to do this in an airport).

As we settled in with the flight socks on and eye masks and a chicken curry dinner it became appartent that it is really had to sleep on a plane! Never the less we did our best and managed 6 hours between us. On our arrival at 655am in Tokyo we were tired put full excitment. After passing through customs we discovered that Qantas had negletced to put Emily's bag on the plane with us. A very helpful young fella help us sort it out and the bag was to be on the next flight from Sydney (thanks Qantas it ended up arriving on sunday night!).

We didn't let this slow us down, Emily to her credit took it all in her stride and so off we went to negotiate the Tokyo rail network (those familiar with this network will feel my pain). After a lot of guessing we decide to stand and watch what people did, this was no help, we then had the help of the station master who basicly bought the ticket for us, which wasn' much help for the next time we had to buy a ticket With our ticket to ride we headed to Asakusa and our capsule hotel.

Once we located the hotel we realised it was only 9am and could not check in until 2pm. Conveniently we only had one bag to store and quickly found lockers in the railway station (which are everywhere, as are lockers for hire, literaly just randomly on the street).

After lightening the load we set off to explore Asakusa, the guide book described it as stuck in the Edo period (which means it is an old part of town) and it was a fantastic way to take a first look at Tokyo. Shrines, Temples and stall lined streets greeted us and we spent the first few hours wandering the streets seeing the sites.

After a starbucks and rice and some kind of meat lunch we headed for Uneo and its parks. This area had the Zoo and lots of national musems and galleries for different things but our interest (due to tiredness) was begingin to suffer. We returned to the Capsule Hotel and check in.

This is were it got interesting. First we walked in and imediatley got shoo'd over to the area where you put shoes in to little lockers and put on the slippers in the locker. We then went through the process of checking in using a vending machine I was directed to a locker, while Emily was left in the "loby" and then told to put my stuff in it and get change in to the PJs provided (this is what i gathered from their Japanese instructions) after getting change i emerged to see Emily waiting with a confused look on her face and she had to go to the 8th floor (seperated sexes) to meet a similar locker. We agreed to meet in the loby for dinner at 6 and so than it was off to try out the Japanese baths

....to be continued (we may miss our flight)