Here we are.
Feb. 13th, 2005 12:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moominmollyIn Tokyo!
The plan was to stay up all night so that we'd crash on the plane at a time appropriate for Tokyo-night. What I'd forgotten is that being immersed in another language is ultra-stimulating and ultra-tiring: everything is a test. Looking at road signs is a test. Billboards and station announcements and vending machines are tests. Signs directing you around are tests, and finding a street address is definitely a final exam.
So far, people seem very entertained by our funny hats. I feel like an absurd giantess, 90 degrees rotated from in-fashion because not only am I not wearing ultra-thin pointy spike heels -- apparently, quite in, at least as far as this correspondent can tell -- I'm 9 feet tall, I weigh a thousand pounds, and I'm wearing a hot-pink hat. It's nice. I don't blend at all, which is fun! It means I won't wind up playing the also-stressful game of "can I blend in and look like a native, or at least a native of one-country-over?" since: no. No, I cannot. I can practice my Japanese on these people, but I will be fooling nobody.
We are at Ryokan Asakusa Shigetsu in the Asakusa district iof Tokyo. We got a "Japanese-style" room, which makes me think of all of that time that we slept on the floor. We clearly did not do it in style, as it turns out. At any rate, we adventured through customs and through the airport and through the train to the city, and then through a subway station to the proper train and from our stop to the ryokan, which was enough to knock us out for the evening. Except that I just woke up. Oops.
Bicycles! So many bicycles. Perhaps another time, when my Japanese is more than wishful thinking and a knowledge of the hiragana.
Speaking of which, damn, is this written language confusing. I know the hiragana and *some* of the katakana, and the kanji for Tokyo. But it's kanji, kanji, kanji! I'll read a sign, and it will helpfully tell me something like
Or, you know, whatever. Great! Glad I know what those particles are doing to the impenetrable real content of the sentence. It's frustrating to learn that I can't read words I already know how to read in hiragana. Stupid Kanji! Getting in my way!
I mean, it's all thrilling. I'm enjoying what I can understand of the language, and I love the experience of being adrift like this. Tomorrow, we'll get up and wander. We'll eat food, maybe wander through Ginza and one of these legendary department stores, maybe find a museum, certainly brave some restaurants and order sushi and photograph the whole experience. And it will be tiring, and thrilling, and I promise to tell you all about it, mister livejournal.
The plan was to stay up all night so that we'd crash on the plane at a time appropriate for Tokyo-night. What I'd forgotten is that being immersed in another language is ultra-stimulating and ultra-tiring: everything is a test. Looking at road signs is a test. Billboards and station announcements and vending machines are tests. Signs directing you around are tests, and finding a street address is definitely a final exam.
So far, people seem very entertained by our funny hats. I feel like an absurd giantess, 90 degrees rotated from in-fashion because not only am I not wearing ultra-thin pointy spike heels -- apparently, quite in, at least as far as this correspondent can tell -- I'm 9 feet tall, I weigh a thousand pounds, and I'm wearing a hot-pink hat. It's nice. I don't blend at all, which is fun! It means I won't wind up playing the also-stressful game of "can I blend in and look like a native, or at least a native of one-country-over?" since: no. No, I cannot. I can practice my Japanese on these people, but I will be fooling nobody.
We are at Ryokan Asakusa Shigetsu in the Asakusa district iof Tokyo. We got a "Japanese-style" room, which makes me think of all of that time that we slept on the floor. We clearly did not do it in style, as it turns out. At any rate, we adventured through customs and through the airport and through the train to the city, and then through a subway station to the proper train and from our stop to the ryokan, which was enough to knock us out for the evening. Except that I just woke up. Oops.
Bicycles! So many bicycles. Perhaps another time, when my Japanese is more than wishful thinking and a knowledge of the hiragana.
Speaking of which, damn, is this written language confusing. I know the hiragana and *some* of the katakana, and the kanji for Tokyo. But it's kanji, kanji, kanji! I'll read a sign, and it will helpfully tell me something like
[kanji] no [kanji] wa [kanji kanji]!
Or, you know, whatever. Great! Glad I know what those particles are doing to the impenetrable real content of the sentence. It's frustrating to learn that I can't read words I already know how to read in hiragana. Stupid Kanji! Getting in my way!
I mean, it's all thrilling. I'm enjoying what I can understand of the language, and I love the experience of being adrift like this. Tomorrow, we'll get up and wander. We'll eat food, maybe wander through Ginza and one of these legendary department stores, maybe find a museum, certainly brave some restaurants and order sushi and photograph the whole experience. And it will be tiring, and thrilling, and I promise to tell you all about it, mister livejournal.
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