the tall blond guy goes to japanthe tall blond guy goes to japan
Hey isn't Martina Hingis cute? Hey, I think so. This is what happens when I work in a sports department of a newspaper. I'm baraged by pictures of the women's Australia Cup winner. Coool!
Today I met my new friend, and took him around Tokyo a bit. He's another one of us foreigners parachuted in to work on the newspaper during the Nagano Games. He talks too loudly, and the first thing he says to anyone is "Do you speak English?". Definitely not my style of surviving in Tokyo.
Anyway, walking with him around the streets, pointing out things, reminded me of how much really basic stuff I've left out of these entires.
For example, the road work. Everything is always under construction here. They seem to dig things up for fun. In fact, there are entire sections of road built with removable cement panels for easy access to whatever's underneath. There are always dozens of people wandering around the holes, many of them with glowing sticks they use to wave cars around the big flashy obstruction.
RoboTrafficCopWhen all these people are busy doing something else (what the "else" is, I'm still not sure), they put this guy out, complete with a moving arm and glowing stick. For those who are unsure, yes indeed, that is a mannequin.
They drive on the left here, like England and Hong Kong. This makes crossing the street dangerous for people like me, who tend to look left first to see if anyone's going to hit me. I have to now look right first. Tricky! Also, they tend to walk on the left side of the sidewalks too. This is especially important in crowded places, like subways and the JR Line stations.
Speaking of the transit system- it's a very handy and quick way to get around. The main subway station seems to be one called "Otemachi". It's huge and very easy to get lost in. It's underneath most of the main financial/office district. You'll see ways in and out everywhere. Laberinthyne and crazy! Five of the ten subway lines pass directly through it, and the other five pass somewhere very near it. The subway's fast, cheap, and (most imporantly for me) nearly fully bilingual. Nicely colour-coded as well. If you can't remember the names of the various lines, just remember the colours and you'll be fine.
Inside most of the subway cars is an electonic map of the route, which tells you which station you're at, and to which station you're headed. It even lists the various connections at each station, whether they be subway, JR or something else again.
The JR Line (seperate ticket from the subway!) is all above-ground. There's one main circle line going around most of Tokyo (I think), called the Marunote line (that's probably not the right spelling). It's the green line on JR maps. The JR is less bilingual than the subway, lots of this is guesswork and luck, but if you do screw up and go the wrong way, it's pretty easy to get a train in the other direction and go back to start again. Beware! Sometimes the train on the other side of the platform might be on a totally different line! Be careful.
I'm still not sure about the street naming system here. I'm not sure if the streets have names, so I keep an eye out for landmarks. Even if the streets had names, I'd have to figure out a way to remember them, and I'm having a hard enough time remembering my security pass each morning.
