Day One: Pullman to Toyohashi

I left on a Saturday afternoon and when I made it to my final destination, it was a Sunday evening. A very long day indeed!

Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport is a small one, catering to only one airline, Alaska/Horizon Air. What surprised me a bit was the local resident of the airport, a very cute and playful cat:


This cat played 'hide and seek' with a little kid around the security equipment. Very funny to watch, actually.

From Pullman I went on to Sea-Tac Airport, the gateway city to anywhere else in the world. I had a short layover there and then settled on the Airbus A330-200, a whale of a plane! My flight lasted just under 10 hours to Narita Airport, which is an hour or so outside of Tokyo. From there caught a connecting flight to the Central Airport in Nagoya. My flight out of Narita was delayed almost an hour because a line of planes waiting to take off had accumulated. Narita isn't the best of airports for it is well known for delayed flights, long wait times, and in some cases, the planes not being able to land due to miscommunication and disorganization.

I arrived at the Central Airport around 7:30pm and met up with Jill at 8pm after going through Customs. I thought from there we could go to Toyohashi so I could drop all my stuff and sleep for the next 10 hours. Well, I was mistaken! Turned out that in order to get my JR Pass, I had to pick it up specifically from a JR Ticket Station, the closest one being in Nagoya, about 50 minutes away by train. We went and found the place, but it was closed. :( Luckily, someone at the Shinkansen ticket office was nice enough to process my voucher and I got my Pass. Then my sister was hungry and we walked about a while looking for a place that was still open.

One of the unique things I noticed about restaurants in Japan was that they not only listed their opening and closing times, but also last call. This is to give everyone an idea of how long they have left to eat or drink and if they can still get a meal at a restaurant even before stepping foot inside. I also saw another restaurant where you made your order through a vending machine outside and then you could go inside with the ticket. Just hand the ticket over to the chef and he'll make up your dish. Simple and easy. Some other places we went had call buttons at the table that you could press when you're ready to order instead of trying to flag down your server.

We eventually make it to Toyohashi, 40 minutes away by train from Nagoya and potentially longer by car. It's a ways away. When we got off at the station, we came out on the eastern entrance and ended up in a wide open plaza.



After snapping my first photos in Japan, I dragged myself to my sister's apartment, at this point nearing midnight. After getting there, I was amazingly awake and we stayed up another hour chatting and setting up my futon. My sister used to have two other roommates, but one moved back home to Australia and the other had transferred to Tokyo. The apartment had a main living area with a kitchenette, a couple of couches, and a small dining table. There were three bedrooms, two Japanese style with tatami mats and a single Western style room with just a hard wood floor. An interesting part of the apartment was the bathroom (don't mind the posters of cute J-boys!) :


I thought it was pretty convenient that the sink is on top of the toilet, which saves on space. Also, after you flush, the water starts up from the faucet, cutting out touching a knob that could be dirty and turning it off when you're done. Also, I was glad she didn't have a Japanese style toilet which is situated in the floor and the women have to squat. >_< Those are tricky...

And after setting out all my stuff and getting a general idea of tomorrow's plans, I went to bed. And I would soon find out that I was going to have a rude awakening come dawn.

Preflight Preparations

Thinking back on it all now, my journey to Japan didn't begin when I left Pullman, but when I started planning my trip: passport, transportation, currency, and vacancy. All of this I started working on in February 2007, about two months before the big day.

With air travel restrictions increasing everyday, I had heard that it would take longer for one to get their passport processed - even if you had it expedited. Luckily, I've had mine for a few years now and was all set. My biggest worry about this trip was my airfare and how much it would cost. I first shopped around with major airlines online, such as Northwest, United, and Continental. After a month of searching and still nothing that I could afford, my sister in Japan suggested that I look into JALPak International. It was fairly easy and cheap! I was able to get a round trip ticket for $800 after taxes and I was even able to fly directly from the local air strip, Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport.

A week after I purchased my ticket, my sister sent me an email letting me know that I should buy a rail pass in the States since it'll be cheaper if I do. In Japan, the best way to get anywhere is by train, subway, or bus, and one of the best known companies is Japan Rail. The JR Pass is probably the best thing any foreign visitor to Japan could possess, as it allows you to travel across Japan without the confusion of buying the right train ticket when it turns out there are 4 different trains you can catch to the same location. O_o After getting your Pass, all you simply need to do is show it to the attendant at the window instead of passing through the ticket gates. Just remember though, buy your Exchange Order before you leave and make sure you get the stamp in your passport! Without it, your Exchange Order is useless even before you get to use it! And in my case, make sure you know where a JR Office is before you need to take a train anywhere. I ended up traveling an hour before getting to a JR Office to get my Pass. >_<

My the last piece was the currency. I found you can travel with USD, but you would have to exchange it at an exchange office or bank when you first arrive. In my case, I didn't feel like doing that, so I ordered an exchange of currency through my bank. It was fairly easy and the money was debited directly from my bank account. I ended up going with cash and traveler's cheques, which both had their positives and negatives. The cheques worked great since I could carry a large amount on me and not have it readily stolen, but it was a hassle to get to a bank to change it into cash. The cash worked well also, but what I wasn't prepared for was the amount of coin currency I would get. Japanese yen comes in 500, 100, 50, 10, 5, and 1 coins. By my third day I was bogged down with coins that I had to keep a separate bag for it all! Yen is very interesting money. The current exchange is close to even, $1 ~ 118 yen or so. The 50 and 5 yen coins have holes in the middle and according to my sister, the preferred coin when making an offering at a temple or shrine.

Lastly, one must know where they're going to be staying when traveling. I already knew that I would have a place to stay at my sister's apartment, which had three bedrooms and one bath. The rooms consisted of one Western style room with hardwood floors and a closet with folding doors and two Japanese style rooms with tatami mats and sliding closet doors. I enjoyed staying in the Japanese style room because the tatami mats were actually comfortable to walk on. I also slept on a futon, which in my opinion is a much improved sleeping bag! I wasn't sure if I would get much sleep on a futon, but mine was surprising soft due to the stiff foam mat and the plushy mattress. Besides my sister's place, I stayed in three other places, a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn), a business hotel, and a youth hostel. I will go into more detail about these types of places when I come to the city where I stayed in one.

With all these details in mind, I was ready to fly!

Welcome!

Hello Everyone! Welcome to my blog and I hope you decide to stick around and read up on my recent trip to Japan. I left Pullman, WA on April 14th, 2007 and returned on April 22nd, a nice nine days, at least two spent just traveling since the time difference is so huge.

It was my first time to travel to the land of the Rising Sun and it was definitely an amazing and interesting experience. I know my posts won't do justice to the sites I saw, but I will do my best and will try to keep up with my posts. And for those who may be interested in seeing Japan themselves, please feel free to inquire how I prepared for the trip. There were a lot of things I looked into before I left that made things so much easier! Thanks for coming by!