Tokyo Orientation part 1

If you are curious as to why the Tokyo Orientation post comes after the first Shimane post, you aren't reading carefully enough. I didn't have access to the internet in Tokyo, so it had to wait until now. I also never got to see my old host family, the Nishiyamas in Mobara, due to a packed schedule, which is zannen, but I have traded some emails with them, and they have wished me all the best and whatnot. I like to put just one word of Japanese into an English sentence so that it annoys everyone.

We arrived at Tokyo's Narita airport around 2:30 pm on Sunday. We took Japan Airlines (JAL), or at least most of us departing from Chicago did. Some people were unlucky enough to get stuck on American Airlines. I say unlucky because apparently American sucks, though I have not personally flown with them, so I do not know specifically. The flight was actually pretty alright. I mean, it was 13 hours long or so, but pretty comfortable. Also, since we all flew out together, we all sat by people we had maybe met in Chicago, or at least people who were doing the same thing as us, giving us a little to talk about. Usually, you end up sitting by some random stranger and only say,"uh, excuse me, I need to pee." It's usually very awkward, like it was the last time, when I got stuck next to some Korean guy who slept THE ENTIRE FLIGHT except for meals. I can't sleep at all on planes, which was no different this time, so that just annoyed me. Also, since he was Korean and I don't speak a lick of Korean (I'm pretty sure nobody but Koreans and the computer that invented Korean actually does), communication was pretty much limited to grunting when I had to get up.
JAL's flight was nice. There were decent meals and we each got a little screen to watch movies and even play games on. Seriously, the remote control connected to the chair became a video game controller when turned sideways. The games were all pretty weak, of course, but I was still impressed with playing knock-off tetris 30,000 feet in the air. I ended up watching most of The 300 and The Number 23. I also watched some movie that I didn't get the title of. At first, I thought it was in French because everyone was making weird throaty noises like when you say "croissant," but after about five minutes, I realized I should probably have at least recognized a pronoun in there, so I thought it was German. I also thought it was set in Nazi-occupied France, but by the end, I became convinced it was Nazi-occupied Denmark. I'm still not totally sure. I was only getting the movie by reading the Japanese subtitles, which is a little difficult. I still sort of got the gist of the story, which was full of twists and depressing moments where people die at the hands of Nazis. It was also full of not being very good. So, take that, foreign cinema!
Anyway, when we got to Narita, we had to go through customs, which is a ridiculous joke of a process. A customs official asks you (usually just by pointing) if you have a yakkan shomei (drug importation form) and then lets you through. Good security, Japan. Then we had to get our luggage sent to our home prefectures and get on a bus to the hotel. It was absurdly hot and humid, which is pretty much Japan's calling card. The bus took about 1.5 hours and took us to the fabulous Keio Hotel in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Shinjuku means "new inn" and Tokyo means "east capitol" if anyone was wondering. The hotel is simply massive and beautiful, easily the nicest place I have ever stayed. Once we were all checked in, there was nothing required of us, so we were left to find dinner in Tokyo on our own.
Shinjuku is one of those parts of Tokyo that you see in pictures, where everything is lit up and there are people everywhere, just milling about the tiny streets. I ended up running into a girl who had never been to Japan before, and I went with her and her two new friends to dinner. I was the only one there that spoke any Japanese, so they were hoping for me to do things. Little did they know the fact that "experts" on Japan will deny. There is no reason to learn Japanese because everyone speaks English. They usually just speak (incredibly) badly or will just avoid speaking because they are embarrassed by it. Also, most restuarants' menus have pictures of the food, so all you have to do is point and maybe say, "onegai shimasu" if you are feeling saucy. We had some ramen, which was pretty good.
Ramen is a huge thing in Japan, unlike in America, for those who don't know. There are ramen stands/restaurants every five feet or so, all claiming to have the best noodle soup in Japan. They are all lying. All ramen is the same, regardless of what Japan snobs will tell you. It is all noodle soup with some meat in it, in the flavor of your choice. If your choice is miso, spicy, or salt. No, seriously. Salt. I'm not knocking ramen, either. It's good and amazingly filling. You pay lik 500 yen (about 5 dollars or less) for a bowl which looks like you could take it down easily, but turns out to be gigantic when you get down to the last of it. Most people don't finish the entire bowl (including Japanese people, who generally hate waste even more than they supposedly hate Chinese people). I generally try to finish it, and I was successful this time. Like I said, I'm not knocking it; it just annoys me when Japanophiles get all crazy for ramen, which is only Japan's second best form of noodle soup. [Cold] Udon is better; this is a FACT.
After dinner, I ended up walking around, heading to yoyogi (period perioud tree?) kouen (park) in Shibuya (I have no idea what this means), where I stayed before, to see the musicians that hang out there at night. Incidentally, the park is home to a giant hobo town, as well. Unfortunately, as it is the very end of the rainy season here, I got soaking wet. I didn't bother to pick up an umbrella because I was already wet and didn't want the hassle of adding another item to my luggage. Since it was raining, nobody was in the park. At least I got to try a kind of beer I have never had, a (I think new) kind of Yebisu in a green can, that claimed to have extra hops or be super hoppy or something. It was nothing special, but I had to at least try it. Yebisu is one of the more minor brands of beer here. I think it might actually be a subsidiary of another company, but I don't remember. Before, I had only seen two kinds of Yebisu, a normal kind and a dark kind. Both are alright, if I recall correctly. Like I said, it's pretty minor, so not something I had a lot of, but I remember a guy from the program I was on last summer going crazy for the dark stuff. To me, it is mostly notable for the little fat fisherman on the cans and the fact that the sound "ye" has been phased out of Japanese for a long time now, so the characters representing that sound are archaic. The cans have "yebisu" printed in katakana on them, but stores usually have them labelled as "ebisu" due to the characters being out of use, and therefore, not on label-makers.
I got back to the hotel sort of late, as I was forcing myself over the jetlag and didn't want to sleep until it was legitimately nighttime in Japan. That sort of worked. That's all for the first day. I like to keep these posts separated.