Japan - Day 1 - Travel Day

20th December, 2007

What an adventure!  The day started like most travel days.  Early.  We caught a ride to the airport with a teacher friend of mine at 4:30 AM.  First stop, Taipei.  After a quick layover, it's off to Tokyo.  We arrived pretty much on time at the Narita International Airport.  Now the fun begins.  Our first job is to find the train line that's supposed to take us into Tokyo.  We had a few minutes before our train left, so we rented a cell phone and got some dinner.  All quite an experience.  Then we had a nice, relaxing 90-minute train ride into Tokyo.  Remember when I said "Now the fun begins."? Well, that wasn't really true.  The airport was fairly easy compared to our next challenge:  The Ikebukuro Train Station.  It's one of the biggest train stations in Tokyo.  (I'm not sure if that's true, but it sounds good.  And it is big.  My most recent count:  At least seven different train lines converge at this station.)  Some of the signs are in English, but most are in Japanese.  Unfortunately, my translation abilities aren't all that great.  We knew which line we had to take (Seibu-Ikubekuro) and we knew which stop we had to take (Higashi Kirume).  But each line has multiple trains running with different stops.  And we could see the gates, but not where to buy the tickets.  Some are express, some are semi-express.  Don't forget the rapid lines.  And the local lines.  As we stared at the train maps, wondering what the heck to do, we heard a voice sweeter than honey.  "You guys need some help?"  Our white knight had arrived!  Apparently our blank stares and the stunning dialogue Devin and I were having grabbed his attention.  "I don't know.  Do you know?"  "I don't know.  Where are we supposed to go?"  "I don't know."  "Is it over there?"  "I don't know."  "Where do we buy tickets?"  "I don't know."  Luckily, this guy offered to help us and started spouting knowledge like water from a fire hose.  Problem was we were only holding cups, trying to catch all of this new information.  Thankfully, some of it actually stayed in our cups and we made it to our stop and found our apartment where we'd be staying.  Heck, we didn't even get his name.  Oh well...

More reports later...

Some pictures from the first day are below.  Click on a picture to see a larger version.

David riding the luggage cart in style.	We stopped for a quick breakfast in the airport in Bangkok.	David and Devin waiting for our first train.	David riding the train to Tokyo.
David took this picture of Lowell on the train.  (Note:  This is the first train, before the excitement.)	And the welcome message on the door of our apartment.