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Published: December 20th 2008
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Gaijin to the Left, Please
I know I ain't eating fish for breakfast. Smoked only, please. After a two year travelblog-able hiatus, I'm back with a sidekick/wife. Noa and I shall be blogging events relevant and pointless, fascinating and rambling and all things in between. If I give her the password, anyways.
We began with waiting for United to replace our plane due to electrical failure, delaying our 1PM departure until 2:30PM. Not a big deal, but it meant we would miss our connection from the Narita Airport to Ho Chi Minh City. Which I will refer to from now on as Saigon. But not in a bitter, damn-vc-won-the-war-and-then-went-and-became-capitalists-anyways kind of way. Not at all.
Which meant that we got an airline-paid hotel stay after the 11 flight to Japan. Cool. I can't say I learned much in my 18 hours in Japan enough to make broad, sweeping cultural generalizations. I will make them anyways. Man, these folks are 1) organized and 2) polite. There are little Japanese ladies helping you fill out forms, guiding you in lines, arranging your flight, hotel, everything. If you get screwed by the airline in America, you and 200 other pissed off passengers will be hearded into room with flourescent lights to stand in a long line to be
Narita Airport Gift shop
You know what Gramma Ray would want from Tokyo? Some broiled eel. rebooked by someone who will probably send your bags to Guam and will probably pass over the obvious, easy flight the next morning to book you on a three stop, whirlwind tour of crappy airports, getting you at about the same time you could have driven to your selected destination. Or walked.
In Japan, you get off the plane, one of 25 uniformed, white gloved politeness-machines hands you a new ticket, tells you the time to be here, tells you about your hotel, the buffet, the shuttle, the free 3 minute phone call, and smiles the whole time. Organized. Polite. I love it already, I haven't even seen the beer vending machines.
We got to the hotel, sans luggage, and crash. The next morning, we get hooked up with the free breakfast buffet. Noa thought she was in heaven- miso soup and salad for breakfast, plus the best friggin lychees we've ever had. I myself was eyeing the bacon.
We couldn't sleep so we went to the airport early to browse. Things here are expensive, but not inordinately so. Also, you can pretty much buy fish or electronics at any store. We walked into abot 15. Each had
Number One Mochi!
It actually said that on the menu. What is it with being number one here? crazy electronis and/or packaged mackeral. Wacky. Noa and I bought mochi's (rice gluten &bean paste sweets) and went to the gate.
I must now confess my sins. If you are not interested in rabbinic bitching, feel free to skip this paragraph. We left SFO on a Thursday- the plan was to get into Vietnam just as Shabbat began, on Friday night. This is due to crossing the international date line. But wait, it got weirder than that. Due to the delay and the lay over, we wound up inJapan on Friday night and Saturday morning. Only, according to Jewish law, it was actually still Thursday night and Friday morning. See, the International dateline and the Halachic dateline are not the same. The Int'l is in the middle of the Pacific. Apparently the halachic dateline is in Eastern China somewhere. We were in Japan on Friday morning. Once we boarded our flight in Vietnam, we flew over the halachic dateline, skipping the day to Saturday afternoon, whereby we got to stand in lines and fill out Visa forms. I would admit that my plan was sucky from the get-go. But when I bought our tickets, the website was so confusing
Notre Dame in Saigon
With accompanying motorbike craziness. as to departure and arrival times and dates, I thought we were arriving Friday morning when Ibought the tickets. Instead, we broke shabbat for all of the 3 hours of it we experienced.
We got to our hotel without our stuff around 6PM and went out for food. Walked around the city center for a while, tried not to get runover by the million or so scooters and minibikes plying the roads. Mostly just were cranky at each other. Ate pho (noodle soup), came back, fell asleep. Our lost luggage was delivered at 10:30PM and we leave in the morning for a three day bike tour of the Meekong delta.
I really wanted to add this info to my other blog, but like a dumbass I titled it 'rabbi mark in guatemala', so if you want the full experience of my narrative style, feel free to surf my musings
here L'Shalom,
Mark & Noa
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Arye Berk
non-member comment
Sounds Interesting
WOW! I like the sound of Japan, it is like Israel's mirror image, NOT! Bring me back some of that eel...MMM! Enjoy your real honeymoon and do not waste time being cranky. Arye