Over the past week or so I have been rather busy; my trip to Japan draws ever nearer (next Friday) and I have spent the week learning more Japanese, planning where to go, and obtaining the necessities for my trip.
I decided that as I was going for a week, it might be a good idea to obtain a “Japan Rail Pass”, at least this way I can ride on the Shinkansen (bullet train) and all other JR lines without having to worry about forking out extra money for travel. I actually think that the Rail Pass is a very good idea, that is if your going on the bullet train, because then it works out to be quite a bargain ^_^ However, obtaining the Rail Pass was a more trouble than I had anticipated. You see I was under the assumptions that the JNTO (Japan National Tourist Organisation) would have a nice big shop with windows laden with images of Japan, and thus I thought finding it wouldn’t be a problem. How wrong I was; I walked right past it the first time because the number at which I believed it to be at was simply an office block, so I walked on, only to find that it was nowhere to be found, so I then retraced my steps and decided to go into the office blocks where the shop/office was supposed to be, and low and behold, on a big board, in small writing was “JNTO”…now I don’t know about you, but how that hell am I supposed to know its inside a totally un-touristy looking place?! Either way, after going there, I then found out that purchasing Rail Passes there was not an option, and I was redirected to another place round the corner.
However, the first place was not a total waste of time, it had TONNES of leaflets and thus I felt it was my duty to obtain one of every leaflet that had anything remotely useful on/in it before proceeding to the next shop/office thingy.Once again, you would be mistaken in thinking that finding this second place was easy, because once again it was a dark office block that looked nothing like a tourist office at all. I walked into this dimly lit corridor, and it led me to a very dark staircase, which had a very suspicious air to it, and the staircase then led me to some very small offices related to Japanese travel. Once I was there, I was greeted by some very helpful people, I wondered how often they got to see other humans enter the office, but nonetheless I got all my uncertainties cleared up and my rail pass purchased.
I have also sorted my money, I translated it the other day (yes i know translated was not the right word but I felt it adds to the eccentric feel of this post) and I now have 131,000 Yen. ^_^
Now all I need to do is plan exactly where I am going on each day, then i am sorted.
