When I got off the plane it was 1pm. About 5am English time.
The heat hit me like a sticky flannel to the chops.
It clung to me endlessly. Acclimatisation would take a good week.
People where everywhere but strangely no Robots. I think the heat must make them rust.
I managed to make some slight contact my Couchsurfer in Yokohama and activate my JR rail ticket.
I now had the freedom of Japan for 21 Days.
Absolutely shattered I made my way into central Tokyo in order to get the connecting train to Yokohama.
Yokohama is a massive port that was consumed by Tokyo's rolling urban sprawl. It was a lot longer away then expected. I fought against sleep on the train, I think in total I nodded off about six times.
The worst thing in all of this was that I was attempting to get to a small station in north Yokohama rather than somewhere particularly well known. I had to ask directions constantly which was usually pointless but always entertaining.
People are so desperate to help here, even if they can't they still try out of a sense of duty. This can make things worse to be honest.
I had to walk between two station because I was to jet lagged to make the subway work. Fortunately it wasn't rush hour (A time when men with white gloves are employed to push people onto the trains)
I stumbled into Otanamachi station and crawled onto a train bound for Tama Plaza. On the train a businessman with great English wrote a list of the stations for me so I couldn't get lost. He also rang my couchsurfer for me. When he left I asked him his name, he said it was Hero. I refuse to spell it Hiro.
Small Japanese children are everywhere on the subway, they are usually chaperoned by the schools are they incredibly cute. I made use of my celebrity status as an Englishman to make friends with some of them. They intermittently, spurred on by their parents, told me their names and ages in English, non were older than six. I practiced my Japanese on them. The train became a happy place. Most people in my carriage were grinning by now.
When I got off the train I had about two hours to wait for Tomomichi (My CS host). I couldn't shake the little kids. Every time I said sayonanra it turned out we were walking the same way. annoyingly when I had finally left them behind in a large mall i realised that I had some English money that I wanted rid of. What Japanese six year old doesn't want English money as a reward for good English?
Unfortunately I couldn't find them again. Dang & Blast.
Tomomichi was a reserved kind of guys. He walked me two his house which is well and truly in the suburbs. The tress blistered with static noise. It was mating season for thousands of huge black moths and they polluted the air with a high pitched white noise and a sound that sounded like a dieing robot.
They weren't robots however. My quest to see a robot wouldn't be that easily fulfilled.
I had woken up by now thanks to some Tapan Ykai (Spelling?) that I had in the Mall. I had no idea what it was, I just bought it. It was eight balls of dough covered in sause and seaweed and to my surprise containing a neon purple octopus tentacles. This was fortunate because neon purple is my favorite flavour of octopus.
I food here is amazing and I will try and keep you updated with as much of it as I can.
On the night I became highly average at chopsticks and slept a rather broken sleep on a futon.
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