Japan 2019 Trip Report Part 1
Jun. 2nd, 2019 09:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spacealien_vampI try to take a trip to Japan once every year or two. This year, the plan was for megoryb and I to meet up with gnine, xparrot, and sara_tanaquil for cherry blossom viewing. The first hitch in the plan occurred way back in fall of 2018, when I was trying to reserve the dates for my trip. You see, annual leave is heavily restricted in my department. We have a random lottery in December for claiming what days we want to reserve the following year, and only one person can reserve any given day. So, for example, if one person wants to take Christmas off, nobody else can take leave that day. We do our best to hash things out beforehand, but some portions of the year are highly contested. As it turns out, the week when cherry blossoms would be in full bloom was one of those times, and I was forced to reserve a block of time slightly earlier than would have been ideal.
The second issue came shortly before the trip, whensara_tanaquil had to cancel her plans due to a family emergency. At that point, our hotel reservations had already been made, a number of which had already passed the refund deadline. I ended up asking my neighbor if she would be interested in joining us and just taking the vacant space in the reservations, and amazingly she was able to do so. She even managed to book a return flight on the same plane as me and megoryb. Unfortunately, she would be taking a different flight there, which threw a slight wrench in our plans upon arrival.
megoryb and I were taking a plane departing SFO with a 2-hour layover in Vancouver before arriving in Tokyo. Vancouver is an awesome airport, and I had made the connection through there several times before. There are no issues with customs inspection; we just walk down a very long hallway to the international departures lobby, so I reasoned we would have plenty of time. In addition, megoryb and I were experimenting with packing extra-light. We each only had a wheeled cabin bag and carryon item for our 10-day trip, so we would not be checking any bags.
Ooooor so we thought. As we boarded the plane, we ended up at the back of the line. The people in front of us boarded with no issues, but the flight attendant stopped us (and the remaining two people with wheeled bags behind us) and said we would have to check our bags because they had run out of overhead space. While annoying, ordinarily this would have been no issue, since checked bags transfer through Vancouver automatically anyway. On this particular day, however, there were extremely high winds, which caused serious flight delays. Our flight was delayed by 95 minutes. By the time we took off, I was concerned that there might not be sufficient time upon our arrival for our bags to be transferred to the next plane. We stressed out over this during the entire flight.
Luckily for us, our pilot was able to make up time en route, and we landed with enough time to make our connection as well as purchase some fast food in the waiting area to tide us over. On the other hand, my neighbor was not so fortunate on her flight. She was flying directly to Japan, but she still had to make a connection in Osaka before joining us in Tokyo. Her flight out of SFO was delayed by a full 2 hours, which caused her to miss her connection. She did manage to get booked onto a new flight (fortunately planes fly between Osaka and Tokyo frequently), but she wasn't able to meet us until nearly 11pm.
We were stuck in the airport arrival lobby for hours, sleepy and starving (because our food had worn off long ago). Most of the shops still open at that time of night didn't have anything for vegetarians (except souvenir candy) and the food vending machines didn't take credit cards. I had taken cash out of an ATM, but (unlike in years gone by) Japanese ATMs now only dispense the equivalent of $100 bills, and the vending machines didn't take those either. By pure chance, however, I had brought along the equivalent of a $10 bill that I had leftover from a previous trip, and I was able to use that to get us some sandwiches and drinks out of a vending machine, which kept us going while we waited (and tried to stay awake). When my neighbor arrived, I quickly got us tickets on the next bus to where we were staying in Ikebukuro, and we crashed at our hotel at about midnight.
Monday, March 11
We knew there would be issues with jet lag on our first day, so our plan was to take it easy with local shopping. We met up withgnine and xparrot. As we set out from our hotel, one of the first sights that greeted us was a fangirl mailbox. For background, the neighborhood of Ikebukuro has long been the location of the main headquarters of the Animate merchandise chain. Over the past 20 years, Animate HQ became surrounded by other shops selling anime and manga-related merchandise. Interestingly, while the more famous neighborhood of Akihabara is the gathering place for male geeks, Ikebukuro specialized in catering mainly to female geeks. This mailbox has been painted to represent the fangirls that visit the area. The sign on the front reads "The Holy Land of Manga and Anime." The picture on the back is a fangirl in cross-dressing butler cosplay having her picture taken by an owl (the symbol of Ikebukuro).
Our next stop was the Bic Camera store next to the train station, where I bought SIM cards for me andmegoryb to put in our phones to allow us to stay connected. On our previous trip, last year, we rented portable wifi units (as I did not own a smartphone then). This time, though, we consulted someone at the Verizon store about international plans, and he advised us that the cheapest thing to do would be to buy temporary SIM cards for data and then converse using an internet app (e.g. Whatsapp). We had never done this before, but he told us that it should be no problem, the staff at the store would put the SIM cards in for us. Well, it seems it wasn't quite so easy. I was able to purchase the SIM cards with no trouble, but the staff said that we had to make the swaps ourselves. If we wanted them to change the cards, they would have to charge us. They did, however, loan us a little wire tool that would open the SIM card slot (which I had in my cell phone box, at home, but hadn't known that I needed to bring). I struggled with the instructions, made more difficult by the fact that my phone is Android and megoryb's is an iPhone, so I had to follow two completely different procedures. The others waited patiently while we spent an hour on this process, but we FINALLY got it done.
We began our shopping by taking a train to Akihabara, where we visited a couple of board game stores and a branch of Animate. I was trying to keep my purchases to a minimum (as you may recall, I had no suitcase along on this trip), but I did get a small board game expansion and a couple of manga. We stopped in Shibuya to see the Hachikou statue and the busy street crossing. We went from there to Shinjuku, where we shopped at a sewing/craft store. I bought some yarn and several cute buttons there. We also saw an image of Chibi Godzilla painted on a skyscraper as a tourist attraction. (Only in Japan?)
Speaking of Only in Japan...we came across quite a number of food items that are examples of classic Japanese marketing. In particular, we were at the beginning of sakura season, so everything was pink. In fact, they even had a seasonal pink, sakura-flavored Pepsi at the supermarket. Another item we found was mascarpone-flavored milk tea. The label says, "Drink together with Pocky, and it's tiramisu!?"
On our way home, we stopped at the Andersen bakery in the Ikebukuro train station. It had been recently remodeled, and they installed amazing new checkout devices. After customers put their pastry selections on a tray (as usual), the tray is set on a type of scanner built into the counter. The scanner snaps an image of the items on the tray and sends it to the register. The register recognizes the shape of each item and attaches a value to it, then calculates the total. Customers insert money in the front of the register. The only thing the clerk does is wrap and bag the pastries. It's incredibly fast and convenient, and much easier than trying to scan bar codes at a self-checkout at a grocery store.
That concludes our first full day in Japan. The real sightseeing begins next.
megoryb and I to meet up with gnine, xparrot, and sara_tanaquil for cherry blossom viewing. The first hitch in the plan occurred way back in fall of 2018, when I was trying to reserve the dates for my trip. You see, annual leave is heavily restricted in my department. We have a random lottery in December for claiming what days we want to reserve the following year, and only one person can reserve any given day. So, for example, if one person wants to take Christmas off, nobody else can take leave that day. We do our best to hash things out beforehand, but some portions of the year are highly contested. As it turns out, the week when cherry blossoms would be in full bloom was one of those times, and I was forced to reserve a block of time slightly earlier than would have been ideal.The second issue came shortly before the trip, when
sara_tanaquil had to cancel her plans due to a family emergency. At that point, our hotel reservations had already been made, a number of which had already passed the refund deadline. I ended up asking my neighbor if she would be interested in joining us and just taking the vacant space in the reservations, and amazingly she was able to do so. She even managed to book a return flight on the same plane as me and megoryb. Unfortunately, she would be taking a different flight there, which threw a slight wrench in our plans upon arrival.megoryb and I were taking a plane departing SFO with a 2-hour layover in Vancouver before arriving in Tokyo. Vancouver is an awesome airport, and I had made the connection through there several times before. There are no issues with customs inspection; we just walk down a very long hallway to the international departures lobby, so I reasoned we would have plenty of time. In addition, megoryb and I were experimenting with packing extra-light. We each only had a wheeled cabin bag and carryon item for our 10-day trip, so we would not be checking any bags.Ooooor so we thought. As we boarded the plane, we ended up at the back of the line. The people in front of us boarded with no issues, but the flight attendant stopped us (and the remaining two people with wheeled bags behind us) and said we would have to check our bags because they had run out of overhead space. While annoying, ordinarily this would have been no issue, since checked bags transfer through Vancouver automatically anyway. On this particular day, however, there were extremely high winds, which caused serious flight delays. Our flight was delayed by 95 minutes. By the time we took off, I was concerned that there might not be sufficient time upon our arrival for our bags to be transferred to the next plane. We stressed out over this during the entire flight.
Luckily for us, our pilot was able to make up time en route, and we landed with enough time to make our connection as well as purchase some fast food in the waiting area to tide us over. On the other hand, my neighbor was not so fortunate on her flight. She was flying directly to Japan, but she still had to make a connection in Osaka before joining us in Tokyo. Her flight out of SFO was delayed by a full 2 hours, which caused her to miss her connection. She did manage to get booked onto a new flight (fortunately planes fly between Osaka and Tokyo frequently), but she wasn't able to meet us until nearly 11pm.
We were stuck in the airport arrival lobby for hours, sleepy and starving (because our food had worn off long ago). Most of the shops still open at that time of night didn't have anything for vegetarians (except souvenir candy) and the food vending machines didn't take credit cards. I had taken cash out of an ATM, but (unlike in years gone by) Japanese ATMs now only dispense the equivalent of $100 bills, and the vending machines didn't take those either. By pure chance, however, I had brought along the equivalent of a $10 bill that I had leftover from a previous trip, and I was able to use that to get us some sandwiches and drinks out of a vending machine, which kept us going while we waited (and tried to stay awake). When my neighbor arrived, I quickly got us tickets on the next bus to where we were staying in Ikebukuro, and we crashed at our hotel at about midnight.
Monday, March 11
We knew there would be issues with jet lag on our first day, so our plan was to take it easy with local shopping. We met up with
gnine and xparrot. As we set out from our hotel, one of the first sights that greeted us was a fangirl mailbox. For background, the neighborhood of Ikebukuro has long been the location of the main headquarters of the Animate merchandise chain. Over the past 20 years, Animate HQ became surrounded by other shops selling anime and manga-related merchandise. Interestingly, while the more famous neighborhood of Akihabara is the gathering place for male geeks, Ikebukuro specialized in catering mainly to female geeks. This mailbox has been painted to represent the fangirls that visit the area. The sign on the front reads "The Holy Land of Manga and Anime." The picture on the back is a fangirl in cross-dressing butler cosplay having her picture taken by an owl (the symbol of Ikebukuro).Our next stop was the Bic Camera store next to the train station, where I bought SIM cards for me and
megoryb to put in our phones to allow us to stay connected. On our previous trip, last year, we rented portable wifi units (as I did not own a smartphone then). This time, though, we consulted someone at the Verizon store about international plans, and he advised us that the cheapest thing to do would be to buy temporary SIM cards for data and then converse using an internet app (e.g. Whatsapp). We had never done this before, but he told us that it should be no problem, the staff at the store would put the SIM cards in for us. Well, it seems it wasn't quite so easy. I was able to purchase the SIM cards with no trouble, but the staff said that we had to make the swaps ourselves. If we wanted them to change the cards, they would have to charge us. They did, however, loan us a little wire tool that would open the SIM card slot (which I had in my cell phone box, at home, but hadn't known that I needed to bring). I struggled with the instructions, made more difficult by the fact that my phone is Android and megoryb's is an iPhone, so I had to follow two completely different procedures. The others waited patiently while we spent an hour on this process, but we FINALLY got it done.We began our shopping by taking a train to Akihabara, where we visited a couple of board game stores and a branch of Animate. I was trying to keep my purchases to a minimum (as you may recall, I had no suitcase along on this trip), but I did get a small board game expansion and a couple of manga. We stopped in Shibuya to see the Hachikou statue and the busy street crossing. We went from there to Shinjuku, where we shopped at a sewing/craft store. I bought some yarn and several cute buttons there. We also saw an image of Chibi Godzilla painted on a skyscraper as a tourist attraction. (Only in Japan?)
Speaking of Only in Japan...we came across quite a number of food items that are examples of classic Japanese marketing. In particular, we were at the beginning of sakura season, so everything was pink. In fact, they even had a seasonal pink, sakura-flavored Pepsi at the supermarket. Another item we found was mascarpone-flavored milk tea. The label says, "Drink together with Pocky, and it's tiramisu!?"
On our way home, we stopped at the Andersen bakery in the Ikebukuro train station. It had been recently remodeled, and they installed amazing new checkout devices. After customers put their pastry selections on a tray (as usual), the tray is set on a type of scanner built into the counter. The scanner snaps an image of the items on the tray and sends it to the register. The register recognizes the shape of each item and attaches a value to it, then calculates the total. Customers insert money in the front of the register. The only thing the clerk does is wrap and bag the pastries. It's incredibly fast and convenient, and much easier than trying to scan bar codes at a self-checkout at a grocery store.
That concludes our first full day in Japan. The real sightseeing begins next.
