Day 2: Starting off on the wrong/right/best possible foot/food

Friday February 25th, 2011 by Giel Op 't Veld

Kampai! Finally, after preparing for more than a year, we are here: Japan.
Just as planned, we started our journey at the train station in Eindhoven. Some of our friends, family and even people from the university came to wave us goodbye. We arrived at Schiphol on schedule and everyone had some time to relax at either Starbucks or the Irish Pub. Up till then, everything went very smoothly. The plane was ready to leave and we were already looking forward to touching Japanese soil in less than 11 hours. But unfortunately faith interrupted: the right engine of our airplane had technical issues. After waiting for more than two hours we began to fear that the plane would not be going to Japan at all and things started to look not so bright. You can imagine that we were relieved when after 4 hours the captain of the plane finally informed us the engine had been rewired and were now working properly again. After that, we had a good flight.

The culture shock kicked in as soon as we left the plane. Japan has personell for everything! And even though we were delayed for four hours, our bus arrived in 5 minutes. We drove to Tokyo by night, which was a beautiful sight. Luckily, our hostel was not hard to find and the reception helped us to find a restaurant where we could still eat with 32 people (hooray for people who speak perfect English!).

Culture shock number 2: The food is soooo good. We ended up in an Izakaya-style restaurant and that proved to be a bit difficult. After a discussion involving a lot of hand signs and notes, we almost lost hope (nay for all the people who do not speak any English). Luckily, the picture menu came in to save the day and wow, our patience sure paid off. We shared many different platters of food and every single dish was absolutely delicious. Japanese food, you’ve just got to eat it!

Today, we are rested and the sun is shining. Time to visit Shibuya and Shinjuku!