from one capital to another

The flight to Japan was not direct. Flying Korean airlines, we had a four-hour stopover in Seoul from 0530hr local time (2 hours later than Vietnam). Not the most opportune time since our flight left Hanoi only 4 hours before. But we caught a few winks of sleep in the airport.. My first airport nap.. Exciting stuff! We finally arrived in Tokyo's Narita Airport at 1130hr and had to find our way to the hostel via the city's extensive (and very confusing) subway system. Another 4 hours later and we had checked in.

The first afternoon and evening was spent walking around the Shinjuku area, in awe of the mass of neon lights, karaoke bars, game parlours, restaurants and crazy amounts of people out on a Wednesday night. For our first dinner we got straight into it.. Just about every restaurant you find (namely the Shokudo restaurants) has examples of their dishes in the front windows - not just photos, but actual plastic models of each meal with a corresponding description (in Japanese) and usually an item number. Upon entering the restaurant, immediately inside the doorway is a vending machine with each dish as a separate button. You select and pay for your meal then it gives you a ticket which you take to the chef to prepare. Some machines have pictures of the dish, but the majority don't, and so you generally are just choosing blindly unless you remember the number from the window display. Luckily, every meal we've picked in this way has been pretty damn good so no complaints there!

Continuing the vending machine theme, drink machines can be found literally on every street - and they don't get vandalised! And it's not just soft drink that they offer; there are juices, cigarettes (for around A$3 a pack), beers and spirits, even hot coffee and tea in a can! Hot-drink vending machines.. What an invention.. Perfect for that wintery afternoon.

We are finding the lack of English signage quite widespread here, even some subways show the station names only in Japanese. It's definitely a challenge, especially in a station like the one in Shinjuku with around 30 exits. Maybe parallel with this finding, we have not seen all that many Westerners here as compared to, say, Saigon. This could also be just that the population of Tokyo is so huge that no matter how many foreigners were here, their numbers would still pale in comparison. Either way, it's quite nice being amongst only Japanese - makes you feel as though you're getting in on the culture a little more.

Although the subways can get quite confusing, they are also a brilliant (although not all that cheap) way to get from place to place and we took full advantage - I think I worked it out to be around A$40 each that we spent on the subway in the one week that we were in Tokyo! Because of this ease of travel, we visited each main area of the city a number of times over that period...

Photos:

1. in the Seoul airport

2. ordering a meal in a shokudo restaurant

3. the subway

4. plastic food displays

5. drink vending machine!

6. just a little confused

6. check out the number of overhead signs.. so straightforward..