In transit

My flights to Japan went pretty well in the end. I had the rare experience of sitting next to someone who wanted to talk. This was a recent college graduate who would be working at a center in Japan that promoted environmentally conscientious agricultural practices. I wonder why they are importing foreigners to work in such a business...

For the first night, I was going to stay in a hostel not far from the airport. The airport is commonly said to be in Tokyo, but it's actually in a somewhat rural area called Chiba, the prefecture east of Tokyo.

(Chiba looks like a cute dog, they claim)

Anyway, at first my plan for getting to the hostel was to call the owner and ask him to pick me up. Apparently this would be free except for the cost of the phone call. But I felt bad asking to be driven to and from the airport twice, especially when the hostel is already so cheap. The alternative was to take a bus (barely more than the phone call) and then walk about 20 minutes. This would also give the benefit of seeing the countryside up close and giving me a chance to grab dinner on the way.

My first problem was finding the bus. The ticket office didn’t list the bus going to my destination. After looking around some more I checked the instructions and sure enough, the bus only departed from terminal 2. So I moved to terminal 2. Here the bus was listed in one place, but not at the ticket office. My instructions couldn’t advise me about this, and neither could Google, so eventually I asked at the information counter, and they told me to pay in the bus itself.

So I started waiting for this bus. Incidentally, my flight got in 45 minutes late (I have no idea why) and I didn’t clear customs until 5:15. After getting money, storing a suitcase, and finding the bus, it was 6:30. In the US, it would still be light, but here the sun is gone by 6:30. When the bus dropped me off it was a little after 7, and I was in pitch black night walking between fields and a highway. In the US this would have been very uncomfortable, but here there was a sidewalk on both sides of the road, despite the rural nature of the area.

I found the hostel without trouble about 30 minutes later. It had a very homey feel, with tatami mats and futons to sleep on. There was also a nice addition of short paper dividers between the beds, which gave more privacy than any other hostel I’ve slept at (except the one in Paris which had curtains to cover the face of the bed). After a shower I was too tired to eat, so I went to sleep immediately, about 8:30. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to lie down.

Public transportation always interests me, and it provides plenty of opportunities for embarrassing mishaps. I hopped on the terminal transfer bus through the exit doors. I’m not sure how bad this was, since I’m fairly certain it was a free bus. In Russia, typically a bus would keep its back doors open if the ticket fee would be collected by someone, as opposed to having a place to pay next to the driver. I rode such a bus frequently, so I didn’t think anything of it until a few minutes later. When I got on the bus to the hostel, I deposited a 500 yen coin (the bus cost 300 yen). Apparently that was the wrong thing to do—if your currency is too large, you have to put the coin in the slot to the right first, then take the change and use it to deposit correct change. Well, now I know.

This entry was backdated to the date of my arrival.