Leaving Japan!

9th of Jul, 2002ce* in: diary

A strange morning of hurryment, was what I expected, but infact all I did was take a shower, ring a taxi then connect with a bus that would take me to narita airport three hours before my flight. I changed the remaining twenty thousand yen that still clung to my wallet for a hundred quid on the nose. That was all the money I had in the universe, and it wasnt even mine. I had to borrow about fourty thousand yen… that was offered to me, as the money from my friend didn’t appear in my bank account the 10 days I waited for it to clear.
Sent a few postcards and spoke on the phone to my girlfriend.

I’ve never had any trouble at airports in my life, untill this day. It turns out that because I overstayed three days longer than my visa the assholes at the airport wanted to take me into central tokyo (about three hours away). Luckily I pleaded my insanity and laziness and they charged me four thousand yen and send me on my way. Well, its not totally like that. They took twenty pounds off me, so I’m now down to about eighty pounds… just enough to get back to Cornwall, maybe.

Japan has treated me as well as it has bad. The cost of shipping a box by air from Japan to the UK is 500% more expensive than the other way around!
Everything costs something. After living without money or a job for a few months has taught me this well. Now I return to the majesty of gray skies and outdated technology, a nation of technophobes without a clue of how things could be run if different. Its a dog eat dog world - Japan is not excluded from this saying, as it soon became clear. Every country thinks ill of one another, negativity is easy to find in the world but if someone is putting extra doses of floride in the Japanese water suply, I wouldnt be suprised. Japan is an ever hungry learing sponge, without much predijuice or ill thought.

Well onto a plane I leap. It feels wrong, I should be staying! Just when I learnt a reasonable level of Japanese too! Its going to be hard to change my brain and reading style.

After leaving Hong Kong and flying all the way to the UK, I noticed that flying really doesn’t take that long anymore, for myself. When I first took a 12 hour flight to San Francisco in 1995ce it felt like an entire year before we touched down. But this flight felt like I just got on a bus for a bit.

My remaining eighty pounds bought me a heathrow express ticket to Paddington station, a young persons railcard, a train ticket to Cornwall and a cup of tea. I was spent! To my suprise my old Nokia phone still works. First thing to do was to call the guy who was meant to send me that bloody money!! Turns out he gave it to his mother and she, being on cornish time, took over 10 days to get around to taking the said cash to the bank… even though he stressed it was urgent! They eventually did send the money, two days before I touched down. Now I have to go through some amazing bollocks to get the money back!

Its fantastic to be alive.

meta

noise (0)

no comments yet

add noise