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Wednesday 7 September 2011

Tokyo Nights



It's half past midnight here in Tokyo and I am sat here, typing this post with the vast view of tokyo lit up to keep me company. I suppose it's time for me to go into detail about my first day. Well here it goes.
The plane was uneventful. Every now and again we hit some turbulence but that was to be expected. Each hour seemed to drag. Each minute going backwards. Lets just say I went a little crazy. Yet for the entire flight I didn't do anything. Didn't watch a movie, didn't get much sleep. To be honest I am very confused how I passed those long, monotonous hours.....

Arriving in Tokyo, it was nice to feel the heat hit you, compared to the cold blistery weather I had left behind. We went to immigration where luckily we had no problems with our volunteer visas and we went on our merry way to collect our bags.

After collecting our bags we met with Ide-san who remembered me from last time but didn't recognise me. It was hilarious watching her face have a blank look of confusion on it when I introduced myself as the past volunteer shelley. She was like 'but you have lost so much weight and you look so different how?" I have no idea. Four years is a long time though. We got sent to GPA to send our suitcases off to our placements and this is where things started to go downhill.

THe man who was dealing with our requests decided that I must be able to speak fluent Japanese. He started jibbering away, saying words like typhoon and pointing at the date. From what I gathered because of the recent typhoon that hit wakayama the delivery will be slower then normal. Instead of taking only two days it will take three. So my suitcase will not be there before me. Instead I must make do with the three outfits I brought for tokyo.

Luckily we have a washing machine in our flat so I can wash my clothes easily. Only problem was that my comfortable flat shoes was in my suitcase. Now my wedges I thought I had broken them in. I could wear them fine in England. Well after walking around shibuya, iiedabashi, the airports in thirty degree heat my feet have had it and I have another day of it tomorrow. I have big feet so it's not easy for me to find shoes that fit. It means I have to buy some mens trainers as they are the only ones that could possibly fit me. I don't want to waste the money but my feet are in such agony I won't be able to survive tomorrow, a whole day of sightseeing on painful, blistered feet. Plus I know that when I go to Nagasaki I need to go straight out to get washing powder and little things like that. Flat shoes are needed. It just makes money a bit tighter then originally planned. Great.

That's the problem. I don't know when I am going to be getting paid for my placement so as such i can't figure how much i need to save and for how long. Always helpful.

So maybe I should talk about the people. Well I am with one group of girls. One is my partner, who i get on extremely well with. The other two are partnered to work in Wakayama. Very nice girls. The others......well my mum always taught me if you have nothing nice to say then don't say anything at all. So I won't.

Well I am wide awake, Having only three hours kip and I can't even shower because we are only supposed to use it at six in the morning. There's so many of us though it's going to be a fight and there's only a flimsy curtain. I don't like that.
Well that's it for now a bit more detailed.
Speak to ya later.

Greetings from Tokyo

Well I have arrived. Safe and in one piece. The plane ride was extremely boring and for the first time I didn't cry when I left my parents. I know its stupid but a year is a long time and to say godbye to them....well I wonder how they will cope without me.
Tokyo is hot, humid and sunny. The men are all styled to perfection with faces and smirks to die for. If only I wasn't sweating like a dog in heat and limping as my heels are not as broken in as I had thought and hoped for. My feet hurt and as I had to send my other suitcase on to my placement I have no other shoes. On a tight budget as it is I really can't afford to buy trainers but they are the only shoes that will fit me and I can't keep walking around in this heat with shoes that are killing my feet.
Now for the people that I am with. My partner is really nice. My roommates are also really nice. We get on well. THe others....at first we seemed to get on great but as we just came back from dinner there was a weird atmosphere in the air. It seems their childish nonsense of cliques has started....Oh well to be honest I don't care. I am hanging around with a cool group of people who are as chilled and relaxed as me and who also want to go to bed and sleep due to the long absense of it. At the minute I am reaching the 42 hour mark.
So when I have something more interesting to post. When I have more pictures I shall post them. The only thing I know is that Tokyo is not my favourite city.
Hopefully Nagasaki lives up to my impression and dreams of it.
Love you Tria xxx

Sunday 4 September 2011

Lady Luck is a bitch

Hey people.

Well it's only a day and a half before I leave for Japan. On Tuesday at five in the morning I shall be in a car for the five hour journey to Heathrow airport. It's so close but at the same time it's the last leg which feels the longest. Today was packing day and whilst I thought all of my clothing would be light and I would be able to fit everything into my suitcase it didn't work out like that. With a limit of 22kg it wasn't feasible to have some of my clothes or my shoes. I had to be ruthless. It hurt but my darling parents are willing to send the clothes that don't fit in the suitcase along to me in Japan. Sometimes I really love the rents.

Now the reason lady luck hates me.
I recently cleared the home computer of everything. My music, my pictures, my videos, my movies, my stories. Everything. I placed it all on my external hard drive which has never caused me a problem. Now all of a sudden I had a thought that maybe I should put all of my data onto my laptop just incase. I didn't do it. What happens? The next day I plug in my hard drive only to find it's not working. No matter what it won't work and as such I've lost everything. Pictures for seven years ago, my music that i found by an off chance movies, old videos of my first time in Japan. It sucks and I was fuming. I guess this means a fresh start. So I'm trying to re-download everything before I go but I will not have the collection which was epic that I once had....

Well that's it for now. The next post shall be from Japan once I get internet sorted etc and so forth.

Love ya
Tria xx