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Published: March 6th 2011
Charles at the doorway of our room
The robe (yukata) is standard wear, inside the hotel.Sandra
My Japanese experience started the minute I got to the Japan Air ticket counter at Vancouver Airport.
Japan Air is an airline dedicated to making your time with them as comfortable as possible. Lots of staff to answer questions and to move things along quickly. They are sensitive to the language difference. When they call out your row number when it's time to board, there is someone holding a sign with that number on it, just in case you don't understand what is being said.
Shortly after take off an attendant put a piece of paper in front of me. It was a questionnaire. They want to know how they are doing. They asked me to rate them from 1 to 10 on such things as:
. . . Did the flight attendants smile?
. . . Were they neatly dressed?
. . . Was there enough food?
. . . Were the meals well spaced?
. . . How was the presentation and taste of the food?
. . . Was the cabin neat?
And so on.
They got near perfect ratings from me.
When we were approaching Narita Airport some visuals appeared on the overhead TV screen. It showed the exact order of what you will do when you disembark, including a floor plan of the terminal.
I have never been through a major airport in so short a time.
We took the bullet train from the airport to the Ueno station, a neighborhood in the northern part of the city, and were at the hotel in about 45 minutes.
Our room in the Ueno Touganeya Hotel is, without a doubt, the smallest room I have ever stayed in. Our first reaction when seeing it, as Charles will tell you, was boy, it's a good thing we are used to small spaces.
I looked around and said that I thought it might be as large as a prison cell.
But there are some differences, says Charles.
You mean there are no bunk beds, I said.
No,says Charles. Something else.
You mean we are paying for it, I answered.
No, Charles said. A prison cell has a guard at the door. We can check out any time.
Charles
It's a small hotel. Someone at the front desk speaks excellent English (not "school English", real English). We got off the elevator on the third floor and laughed -- the doorframes are shorter than I am! The room (described in many online comments as "typical Japanese business-hotel size" is _tiny_. We both had the same reaction:
. . . It's a little bigger than the boat.
HOWEVER:
. . . it is immaculately clean, with new furnishings;
. . . it is very well maintained, daily;
. . . it is inexpensive (for Tokyo).
Japanese has a complex script -- about 2,000 ideograms (kanji), and two phonetic (syllabic) alphabets, hiragana and katakana. I have not made an effort to master it. The letters we grew up with are called "romagi".
Inside Narita airport, there was lots of English signage. But that's not Japan -- it's Touristlandia.
I went out for a short walk. On the street outside our hotel (except for the hotel sign)-- no English script. Are the eggs in the convenience store raw or hard-boiled? Some restaurants have pictures of their food, but most do not. What is it?
What's the name of the street I'm on? Or the street I'm crossing? Are the buns in the bakery sweet or savory? The only things I'm reasonably sure of:
. . . In the bakery, the thing that looks like a French loaf is bread;
. . . The little bottle labelled "Kikkoman" (in English letters (romaji)) contains soy sauce.
This is going to be a challenge.
It's still light outside, but our bodies say "SLEEP !", since it's 00:30 in Vancouver.
Signing off for Day 1 --
. . . Charles
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neomi summers
non-member comment
Sounds like interesting adventure. Neomi Summers