Well, no pictures this update, because the wireless I am hijacking is far away and slow. The trip started at 2:30pm on the 13th for me as I set off for Nagoya-eki. I say “for me” because Yanying, Lili, and Zhangxia decided to go in the morning instead, and I need a visa for China. Oh well, I went by myself. This is where “normal” ends. The bus had a meeting time of 4pm in front of the station, across the street from Bic Camera. Simple enough, no? No, of course not. At 4pm, the emperor of Japan decided to come to the station on his way to the Expo. This meant that 4 blocks of traffic were shut down, and there were cops everywhere. The “bus crowd” was surrounded by gawkers, so we didn’t know what the fuck. I got in a few phone calls to explain this, and eventually someone from the company rounded us up and walked us 5 blocks away so we could leave half an hour late. Folks, I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. The ride was as pleasant as one could expect out of a budget 5-hour bus ride to Tokyo. I arrived at about 9pm in front of Tokyo-eki, and set off to find the Chinese Embassy. This is an habit I have picked up. Whenever I need to go to a place where I had to come the night before to make it in time, I spend a few hours finding the location itself. I wandered around for a good 2 hours before finding the actual subway, not the underground JR lines, these are completely seperate. I got on at Hibuya station, rode to Roppongi, then wandered around. Just like in Osaka, I was right on top of it and didn’t see it for some stupid reason. The Chinese Embassy in Tokyo is currently undergoing security upgrades (ie construction) and is sheathed in construction barriers, so, from a distance it looks like nothing. This was not entirely my fault though. The map on the embassy website is outdated, the streets have since changed names and routes. Asahi Terebi is not where the embassy is anymore. I guess it didn’t matter anyways, seeing as the streets are not marked in anyway at all.
So, how did I find this place. I walked into an ampm konbini to ask directions, and a salaryman who moonlights as a DJ led the way, dragging a cart of records the entire way. Finding the embassy meant Stage One was complete, now to find somewhere to sleep, or at least rest in moderate safety. Thanks to Roppongi Hills, there is only one mangakissaten in the area, and it sucks. It still served it’s purpose though. This DJ was possibly the first genuinely, dare I say, “cool” Japanese person I have met at random. Hell, he even tried to make an offer to pay for my stay there. This is why I came back to Japan for the second semester, I needed this kind of experience to set things right in my mind about Japan before leaving again.
In Japan, it is normal to have nomihoudai, aka free drinks. This place charged 100yen for everything apart from coffee. So, yea, no sleep for me, realizing that 10 iced coffees will keep me awake. Thus the adventure continued at 7:30am. I overestimated the time it would take to get back to the embassy, and showed up at 7:40. Damn coffee. There I sat, papers in hand, in the drizzling rain for the next 2 hours and 20 minutes, I can say this exactly, because for once, a Chinese embassy actually opened on time. I could hear them playing with the door a while before it opened, you know they were in there laughing at us all, the sheep we are. This ends the happy part of the story.
Inside the embassy:
I rush to the elevator, 3rd floor, visas and travel documents, second floor is passports, and first floor is payment. No dig deal. I forgot that the first into the elevator is the last off, damnit, all that waiting and my position in line is lost. I walk, documents in hand, head held high and proud, and am quickly informed that Beiwai filled out a form for me to get a 4-year student visa, instead of a 1-year that I would renew. That’s nice actually, will make things cheap for me in the long run. Unfortunately, this means that my health form must be filled out before I can enter, I cannot have it done after arriving. The problem with this, is that the doctor has to be certified by the Chinese Ministry of Health to do this and for it to be valid. This is very fucking rare to find outside of China, and best done within China itself. You see the catch .22 I am now in. To enter China I need a health form filled out inside of China. In short, I begged. The receptionist even called her boss to make sure, and even tried on my behalf to make an exception. No dice in the end either way, but this was more than I expected out of an embassy that seems to have a policy of never answering questions or picking up phones. Or returning calls when you play the system to eventually get the internal number for someone you need to talk to, and out of pure shock they hang up the phone on you, only to let it go to voicemail for the rest of the day. I decided it was time to take some desperate actions and applied for a double-entry L visa. I can enter on that at the beginning of August, go back to the US for my 3 weeks of vacation, then re-enter and change my visa over to X once inside the country. New problem, this embassy has a policy of no prepaid return mailings of visa/passport, it has to be in person. Well, now I’m screwed. I find a travel agent next door, it’s run by Chinese and they like my language skills. I bargained them down to only a $25 service charge for the visa, and then got a good deal on a flight to Beijing on the 3rd at 1pm out of Nagoya. So, not all was lost I guess.
The wait:
As I said in the beginning, I came alone because Chinese girls are evil things. They planned to arrive at 2pm in the vicinity of Shinjuku-eki. I had nothing better to do, and was dead tired. I basically just slept on the street for an hour or so until their bus showed up, sans Zhangxia. It gets more complicated. Yangying and Lili wanted to go shopping around the station (ie se everything, spend 4 hours doing it, and buying nothing). That sounded good to me, and I went to go find food for me to eat. This led me to finding massage chairs in which I slept for a few hours. I called them when I woke up, no answer. So, I decided to wander some. I made my way to Akihabara, haven of the tech geek, and then got a phone call, “Where are you?!” said an upset Yanying. Thus ended my trip to Shinjuku and my JR ride back to Shinjuku. This is the beginning of me being a whipped shell of a man. Of course, they got tired of waiting and ran off to eat… leaving me waiting. I staked out my place, and despite it being the lockers where we stored our stuff for the day, they couldn’t find it. After spending 4+ hours in the same station, they were actually lost. I got to hunt for them. I found them at about 6:45 and it was time to go off to Haneda, where, in theory, Zhangxia would meet us. Zhangxia had to show up late via shinkansen because of a “secret” reason, that involved an interview, although she claims this information is wrong. $10 on her getting accepted to a Jap uni for grad school. She still won’t talk about it, lest she admit she likes Japan and therefore is incapable of loving China. COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY! Our flight out of Haneda to Naha left at 10:20, and Zhangxia was actually on the same Keio-line train to the airport as we were… weird. Then we got to wait some more, and get on a plane, where we waited some more at high speed. This was Lili’s 3rd flight ever, and she was funny to watch (#18 or so for me, I lost count).
Okinawa:
2 hours and 30 minutes after takeoff, we set down in Naha, Okinawa. The weather is hot and humid, and the taxi started at 450 instead of 650, so it balanced out. We got to our hotel and collapsed. Collapsing was made easier upon discovery of 4 twin beds, instead of 2 doubles. That brings us to this morning. We grabbed breakfast and then went to find our rental car. I would like to note at this point in time that I have not driven seriously for many a year, and now I am driving on the wrong side of the road, shifting with the wrong hand, and guessing as to the meaning of signs, as well as the laws. So I wing it, like I do with everything else in life. I would also like to add that the 3 Chinese who decide everything, decided that $15 was too much for insurance, so, we don’t have any. This will come to mean more later. There, I got you worrying, you have to read on now, HAH.
Driving in Okinawa:
Driving in Okinawa is like driving anywhere else, except not. The streets are all narrow, mopeds are everywhere, and they ignore every damned law known to man. Plus, if you hit one, it is 99.9% of the time considered completely your fault, regardless of circumstances. I drove around a bit, got the hang of driving back in my system, drove 3 blocks on the right-hand side of the road, then had to lose my hang of it again and become a cowering idiot. Well, I figured it out, LEFT, not RIGHT. I also managed to break the law by doing something reasonable somewhere between 80 and 100 times today based on the GPS memory. Left on red is a nono. Why? Because it would be sane, and sane things are not allowed in Japan. We eventually got to a recently-restored castle (many pics, give me time), and then drove around lost for a good 2 hours before stopping for lunch (again, pictures, later). We finished up the day with my penultimate glory of getting to the beach (pics, you know the drill), and finding dinner. My crowning glory was finding the way back home. At this point, I would like to dish out some HATE about the GPS system in our car. It finds the “shortest” route. Which means that I am driving on shitty little streets that are wide enough for half a car, yet contain 2 cars, a moped, and granny with her walker. My other gripe is that the GPS is not always accurate, meaning I can miss a turn, and not know it till halfway down the next block when it tells me to turn, then plots a course to get back on track that is always 4+km. I found that it doesn’t give a damn what path you follow, only where you are. I love U-turns being legal here.
Driving with Chinese in Okinawa:
Oh god, make it stop. It’s as if they want me to crash and kill us all. They have given a new meaning to back seat driver, and my “navigator”, regardless of who it is, is not one. I find a radio station to distract me from their disctractions, and they complain. No idea where they want to go, and random yelling of “there it is!! we just passed it!!!” when in fact we had not. Yanying slammed her door open into a parked car, nice dent… great. A quick look inside the care revealed it is not a man’s car, and it is a cheap car. I console myself with these facts. Minds change about the destination with seemingly no discussion, yet everyone agrees, and the map I am following changes to something completely else and I am driving blind basically. Chinese are evil. I leave it at this.
Random Stop: Kokusai-dori
Driving to a lake, yes a lake, who cares? They do, so the lake it is as long as they pay for parking. Anyways, back to the story, we are driving down Kokusai-dori and they see shopping, time to suddenly pull over, find a place to park, and shop for the rest of the day until the traffic is horrible and it is hot, humid, and dark. Well, it was shopping, not much more to say about it really. We ran into some Army on the street, it was nice to speak real English with midwesterners again. We also witnessed a parade/demonstration/march against the military presence in Okinawa. It was funny, for a few reasons, one of them being that at the time I was yapping with them.
Anyways, that’s all I can think of right now, there might be more tomorrow, maybe not. It all depends on A) Finding net access; B) Not dying in a car wreck.
