My Japan 1 - Welcome to Japan

My Japan - Outside 1996

"Welcome to Japan"

February 1996 - I'd followed the Outside Tour so far from America to the UK, over to Ireland and across to Europe. I had decided after returning home from Paris that I wanted to see more shows, this tour was just so good. I'd always had an ambition to go to Japan, particularly to see David perform over there and this seemed liked the perfect reason and opportunity to go. Two like-minded friends of mine, Steve and Dave, had also decided on a Japanese trip so together we made plans for our journey to the Far East.

Flights booked, money changed, train tickets bought (for the bullet train, tourist visitors had to buy a train pass in their own country as you could not buy one in Japan unless you were a resident - it was also a lot cheaper this way), bags packed and off we set. We flew with KLM, taking off in Birmingham and changing in Amsterdam. I decided to start as I meant to go on by choosing the Japanese option on the flight menu which served me with cold soba noodles, rice & fish. Very nice actually. After an 11.5hr journey we finally landed at Narita Airport, Tokyo at 0910hrs on Monday 3rd June.

It took a while to sink in that I was actually in Japan. Infact it took the 90 minute train journey to Shinjuku in the heart of Tokyo for me to really believe I was there. When we arrived we went to the tourist information centre to get some hotel details and try to book into one. We were given one called "The Apple House" so we rang them to check the cost and find out if they had availability for us.

The Apple House

The Apple House

They had plenty of room at a bargain price of ¥2150 each (approx £13.50 / $21) per person per night. We asked how to get there and caught the subway to Higashi Koganei. From there we telephoned "Apple House" again and the manager there asked us to wait about 15 minutes and he would come and pick us up from the station, very hospitable. On arrival he showed us a small cupboard where we were to put our shoes on entry to the hotel. Each room had its own designated shoe cupboard.

Shoe Cupboards

The Shoe Cupboards
Ours was no.216
(bottom left)

We placed our shoes in the cupboard and walked upstairs in our socks where we were then shown to our room. It was very small containing 2 bunk beds and a cupboard, the door into it was a double sliding glass patio door. Ample for our basic requirements, we only needed somewhere to rest our heads at night. I took one of the top bunks while Steve and Dave took the two bottom ones. It was now around 1330hrs, we dumped our bags in the room and headed off into Tokyo.

Our room at The Apple House

Our Simple Accommodation

Our first destination was the Budokan Arena to have a look at the venue, get acquainted so to speak, and to check out ticket information. It was quite a large venue, capacity of about 10,000. They weren't selling tickets there so we went into a restaurant on the complex and asked the man behind the counter if he knew anything. He didn't speak much English and we certainly didn't speak any Japanese but he was extremely helpful, something we found Japanese people in general to be. He asked some people in the restaurant and made a couple of telephone calls to ticket shops in Tokyo. He told us we could buy tickets from a shop and tried to draw us a map but it was a little hopeless. Nonetheless, we thanked him and headed into Tokyo to check out this information. Eventually we came across a couple of ticket shops, both of which had sold out for the first show but had tickets for the second. They told us however that the promoters would be at the venue from about 1500hrs on the day of the show so we decided to wait.

The rest of the day was spent wandering around Shinjuku, taking in it's awesome sights of huge neon signs and buzzing shops. It was such a busy place and we learned that approximately 1 million people pass through Shinjuku train station every day. That's some crowd. It was time to eat and having looked at various places in the area decided not to opt for a traditional restaurant as we couldn't read the menu and therefore wouldn't have a clue what we were ordering. So McDonalds it was. It was a safe bet atleast. We made our way back to The Apple House afterwards, arriving about 2210hrs. All showered and ready for bed we were desperately in need of rest having been up for about 36 hours. It had been a tiring yet exhilarating day. Welcome to Japan!

A Clock in Shinjuku

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