2008.08.06 First few hours in Japan

2008.08.05
GPS co-ordinates (of the hotel anyway):
North 25°05.971'
East 121°18.894'

Plane: over 6000 km
Car: approximately 20 km in Taipei and about 40 km in Sydney.
Train: nothing yet.
Bicycle: Nothing yet. But soon. Soon...

Got on the plane for what has been the longest flight for me to date.

We arrived in Taipei for an overnight stop-over. I got to practice my almost non existent chinese (shi-shi and nihow [if that is indeed how you spell those words] can only get you so far). Lucky for us the guy at the desk could speak about six languages, or he was just very good at faking it.

Sleep.

2008.08.06
GPS co-ordinates (of Ueno):
North 35°42.859'
East 139°47.038'

Plane: last 2000 km to Tokyo
Car: 20 km to the airport in Taipei.
Train: approximately 50 or so kilometres to Ueno. And about 0.5 km at the airport.
Bicycle: still none. Grr.

More travelling. Great highlight of today (something Naomi and I couldn't stop talking about) was that the train from our plane to the terminal had exactly the same floor level as the floor level in the terminal. No step, no gap (except for maybe 1 cm) and no crap. There was a wall between the train and the platform and it had doors that the train had to line up its own doors with so you could board. The two doors opened perfectly aligned and the carpet matched in the train and on the platform and was perfectly flush. If you have anything to do with the building industry then you would understand why that made us cream our pants. Matching a train floor level to a building exactly... Hot.

Then there was the great adventure of trying to negotiate the unaccompanied baggage department of JAL without speaking a word of Japanese. I should explain.
We had to send our pannier bags via unaccompanied baggage to Tokyo as we came in overweight. It was cheaper than putting it on the plane with us and they are becoming more strict on weight allowance (even though the plane was empty) due to increasing fuel prices.

The forms were only in Japanese. One lady out of about seven customs people I spoke to understood me (which wasn't funny because if they opened my bags it would have cost 6000 Yen). In the end I had to draw a pannier bag on a bicycle to show her what I had. I still filled out the form though. Thank goodness for the bi-lingual boarding pass so I could see which character was for my name and address.

Now we are in a nice hotel with free LAN in Ueno. And we have just had dinner.





Cold noodles and meat on rice for 530 Yen. Can't beat it yet but it is only our first meal in Japan.
Tomorrow we assemble the bicycles and catch a train to Kobe. Hopefully we can ride across to Shikoku to do the 88 temples pilgrimage. Keep you posted.

Chucky.