Arriving to Japan

 Believed it or not. One of my first sights in Japan was goats. On a grassy hill between a parking lot and a mall. In a little town called Tama.

Actually, that's not completely true. See, my arrival in Japan didn't go exactly as planned. First of all, it was my first ever flight away from my usual timezones. That odd feeling when you get off the plane, and it's supposed to be late in the evening and it's actually morning was more than strange. And the process regarding passing immigration was a new experience for me. Fill in papers, stand in line. Fingerprints, photo, the works. Finally made it to baggage claim among the last ones, and it didn't take long to realise that my bag isn't rolling around on the carousel. More paperwork. And more paperwork.

Almost 2h after my plane had landed, I was finally up against my next task: buying a busticket. I had naturally checked things out in advance and knew I needed a shuttle ticket to Tama Center. A very helpful man sat behind the desk, I showed him the papers I had with me with all the details of the hotel and he happily sold me a ticket and directed me to the right platform. It was even cheaper then I'd seen on the site! 20 minutes later my bus arrived and I got on it, already waiting for the 2h trip to be over so I can cosy up in a nice big hotelbed and get some sleep. Dosing off, worried about missing my stop, I fought through the trip and when the bus driver announced Tama Plaza I was more then done with that days travelling. But...

Getting out of the busstation, I couldn't get a grip on where to walk. The streets didn't line up at all the way they did on my map. It was supposed to be just on the otherside of the street! I started to walk around the station, maybe I was just at the wrong exit. Finally I caved in, found a coffee house with wifi and got Maps to work. Yes, I was in Tama. But the wrong Tama. My hotel was 16 km away. 16 long kilometers from my bed, and 10 000 kilometers away from my luggage. Looking through the signs and map at the train station gave me only the info that I will be completely lost and propably crying within the next hour if decide to try that out. A quick count up of the yens I was carrying and into a taxi I went. Might have been the most expensive and unnecessary taxi ride of my life but at that point, I could not have cared less. All I could see was the bed waiting for me. I did make it, even with some cash left and finally, 5 hours after I had landed, 22 hours after I had left home, I was in a bed. After a short powernap though it was time to start finding food, clothes to wear and figure out where I had ended up. Before this point all I had seen, or at least focused on, was road signs. I had made some mental note that it wasn't nearly as crowded I had thought. And a lot greener. Passing around the first corner of the hotel, I ran into the goats.

"I doubt this will be the last surprise of the week" And, no, it wasn't.

Tama was a little calm suburbia. I tried, but had no luck finding a pub to go and wind down too. The 2 nights I was there I barely saw it in daylight either. The first night I couldn't sleep when my watch told me it was night, even having been awake for over 30 hours. My first day waking up in Tama was my 30th birthday, the day I was supposed to go to Hello Kitty Land. Waking up at 4 pm, with the (later found mis-)understanding that Sanrio closes at 5pm, I came to the conclusion that I won't turn 30 in Sanrio. But close enough. I did try out the Taito place and had a nice little meal though, before turning back to lying on the hotel bed with goodies and watching funny weird gameshows. I'd say it was a pretty good birthday.

Sunday was the day. Together with all the other young and not-so-young (oddly enough mostly ladies) and some not-to-excited daddies I queued in line into Sanrio Puroland. Not sure what I was expecting, but I did walk into a building of diabetes. Pink, pastels, giggling kids, music playing that would most likely cause my own father into a rage after 15 minutes. Must say, I was happy I wasn't there with actual kids because quite quickly you see what a trap it is. Having paid 3800 yen to enter, you still had pay extra for pretty much everything. And stay in line and queue. And queue. But me, I didn't bother that much about it. It was as funny for me to walk around and admire the people and everything else so I didn't even try to get into the shows. And they had some free shows around too. 

 After a few hours I made it to the all-you-can-eat-buffet, they had chocolatefountains! With white chocolate and strawberry chocolate too!

I had made it to Hello Kitty land, I had turned 30, and it was time to take on the next adventure: Finding a train to take me to Shinjuku.



Addition: Just noticed after publishing that this was my 30th post in this blog. Perfect timing!