Train. Metro. Train. Plane. Pause. Plane. Train. Tokyo. Travelling to the Land of the Rising Sun from the Land Where the Sun Never Rises (aka England) is no walk in the park. So is navigating Tokyo without any prior knowledge of Japan or Japanese.
After over twenty hours of travel, I stumbled into Tokyo station exhausted, sweating and cursing my impractically heavy backpack, filled with what were clearly unnecessary autumnal additions (don’t believe any of the websites – Tokyo in September is still very much Summer Time). Knowing none of the local tongue, my estimated eighty-minute journey in from the airport had taken me two hundred minutes - I managed to get on the wrong train a total of six times. By my fourth disembarkation of the wrong vessel, the hysterical stationmaster had called over his mate to heckle me.
Welcome to Japan, Anna. You’re in for a sweaty ride. Probably on the incorrect vehicle.
I have since survived my first day in Japan. Being the fumbling, lost tourist I am, I quickly learnt the term for “I’m Sorry”. I quickly forgot the term for “I’m Sorry”. I took more wrong trains. I jay-walked and got lambasted by a policeman in a fancy hat. I ate a waffle shaped like a fish. I saw a man wearing a pink kimono. I craned my neck to peek at extraordinary skyscrapers. I watched a lady get shoved in to a train during peak traffic. I walked through an enormous forest in the middle of the city. I then exited in to one of the busiest streets I have ever been on. I am still uncertain if I am dreaming this all.
How is everything so clean in spite of the 13.6 million people who call this city home? Where did that lady find that Godzilla costume that she had her baby dressed in? Did a chap just ask me to come to Jumanji with him? And, am I mistaken, or is that recorded bird song playing in every metro station?
These are all mysteries to me. Tokyo, in fact, is a mystery to me - a humid, neon, magnificent mystery that I intend to get to the bottom of.
