Ohio Gozaymas-o-menos

“Introit”

Dear Faithful Reader,

It’s been many days since I first (and last) wrote. I apologize for having left you, no doubt clinging desperately to the edge of your foam-cushioned seat, fingers clenched in white-knuckled anticipation, fighting off sleep and the oncoming spectre of dread, in relentless vigil, awaiting another post. I assure you, both I and my travel companion are content and well-fed; indeed, brimming with the satisfaction of bellies full of raw fish, sweetly vinegared rice, and the best sake I’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting. This trip did not, however, begin in such a manner, and it is this very series of events which I hope will explain my absence.

"e.g."

Imagine, if you will, that you are in New York. Nay, Manhattan. Now, imagine Manhattan is a couple times the size and tenders its very own currency. I mean, other than spite and guff, which are freely traded in New York City like spices in the Orient. Now, imagine that you have managed to enter using your credit card, but you have none of the aforementioned currency. "Manhattan Bucks," we'll call them. You've kind of assumed, "Hey, the card worked to get me into the city - it will undoubtedly work to get me around and to my hotel as well!" Now you are told that the subway system only takes Manhattan Bucks, and your card is essentially an inert piece of plastic with a magnetic strip, with no value outside of the worth of its raw materials. Now imagine you are walking aimlessly spiraling out around the subway station for an hour, trying to find a bank or atm or anything which can extract the cash in Manhattan Bucks from your account, but all the banks are staffed by robots, and the atms don't even recognize your card, and no one can change your money to Manhattan Bucks, because there are no money changing places there, and every person you encounter only speaks the same crazy Manhattan moon language that's printed on all the signs, and that includes the poor guy in the subway office who couldn't accept credit/atm cards, if he wanted to.
Okay, so let's join Lucy and Phil as they putter around this guy's office. 500 worthless American dollars in hand, searching for options which can get them to their hotel, so they can start enjoying the city. We are in Tokyo, in the station, but can't get in to the trains because we don't have cash, and Lucy's been sitting in the subway pass guy's office for an hour, waiting with the bags.
"Can we use credit?" "No."
"Can we use travelers' checks?" "What are those?"
"Can we buy tickets from you?" "No. Just passes."
"Can we buy passes from you?" "Only with yen."
"Can we sell our American money, for its worth as a textile, or a food, or anything, to you, or anyone, so we can just get on the subway?"

And so on. Long story short, this brings us to:

TokyoTravelTip #1!
Q: What's the cheapest way to get around the Tokyo subway system?
A: Pity.

Now, with two of the subway pass office guy's generously given staff passes, we ride straight down to a gorgeous and relatively inexpensive hotel room. We check in - the room is lovely as well. The toilet seat even has features we won't even use. The seat heats up. And it plays noise/music when you sit on it. And it is fitted with one of Asia's ubiquitous bidet contraptions. The type where you have to activate the feature by pressing a button which looks not unlike a rotund lower-case w being sprayed with a stream of water with deadly accuracy. I note that whoever used this feature last had set the "water pressure" to its highest setting. And thus, my distrust deepens - Distrust in both a hypothetical person who requires such a focused stream of highly-pressurized water for such duties (this can only be indicative of a person prone to becoming unreasonably jaded), and distrust in a machine which needs a button for you to tell it to stop the aquatic photon-torpedo pummeling your netherregions.

Anyway, we go to the bags to take out the amazing Tokyo guidebook we skimmed through on the plane, ready to delve into the pages and plan our trip. But the guidebook is not in the bags. It is nowhere. Well, okay, that's not true. It is somewhere. And that somewhere is in the seatback pocket on the plane from which we disembarked about 3 hours ago. Probably nestled between a battered multi-lingual copy of SkyMall and the barf bag I spat my gum into. Oh well, no worries - let's plug the computer into our hotel's free internet and surf away. Oh wait. The computer is broken. And the internet in the lobby and every internet cafe we encounter only takes.... you guessed it: japanese yen.

So, this is our first day in Tokyo. We eventually just kind of ate at the hotel restaurant and went to sleep, resting up for our first full day in Tokyo.

But at that, I will have to leave you, with a big ole "To Be Continued."

Dun dun dunnnn......