In which Dan attains Japan and gets a hug from a very happy Lucy. :3

So after seven months since I last saw Lucy and nine and a half months since she went to Spain I still didn't know the day I would be seeing her until the day before. I had no idea what the day would be so I couldn't count down and then in the end it was guess work... until... work on the rig drilling was being delayed and then there was a problem with the blow out preventer and so they decided to replace it I think. This is something that would take three weeks and therefore we were being sent off the rig. Even then though it may not have been the next day and there was uncertainty about whether I would be leaving the next day and I thought I wouldn't be, and then suddenly in the morning I found out I would be and excitement crept up on me. I didn't fully get excited until I booked the tickets and then suddenly I was full of emotion I was shaking. I printed off the ticket in case I needed it and headed to the chopper deck for the first part of a 25 hour journey, although the first few hours were sitting around doing nothing and waiting for the chopper. We watched some whales spray about the sea surface. When the helicopter came it was so delayed that we didn't even go through the customs bit at Barrow Island and instead walked straight on to the plane. That meant I couldn't get my book and I had to sit a very boring two hours on the plane. In Perth I got the airport terminal over to the international and did something very typical. I stood in the wrong line, then the wrong line, then the wrong line and then finally in the economy line which had loads of people in. After that I had some time to kill so I phoned Lucy, I'd already emailed ahead to tell her I was coming. I was talking to her before she was about to head to bed so that was strange. I was quite tired but in the end I only got two hours sleep on the total plane rides. Hong Kong was exciting to fly down into and I saw a large Buddah statue a top a mountain.

Touching down in Narita I found it strange to learn that Tokyo airport is actually in Chiba but the train networks are so good there that it doesn't matter too much. I got held up in customs a little as the man wanted to ask what I was doing there, this is a lot more smooth than the return into AUS believe me but I might not go into that, it was rather embarrassing. Then I walked out of customs and felt the surge of excitement. In truth though it didn't feel like a long walk it felt very quick indeed. I walked out of the tunnel and saw Lucy straight away amongst ten people, I just can't miss her even though he head was turned, she was looking up at the screen and I tried to creep up on her, I never change ;) but she saw me and it was a wonderful moment. After not being with her for seven months we felt a little nervous to be together but that quickly fell away. What I remember most was the way she felt when I hugged her, I had forgotten what it felt like and I hope I never have to do that again O_O

Lucy took Alex the cat which is a cat I bought when I was about 16 that I decided I would give to the one I love when I met her. Mr. Cat is a cat that Lucy made and what I hold on to, so seeing them together means a great deal. 

Let me tell you about Japan. I discovered very quickly after that as we headed out of the airport and into the sights and sounds of Chiba that Japan is probably the most removed place I could have been from Perth. Perth is dusty, brown sandy and wide whereas Japan is the opposite of that which its lush trees, green and tightness. We soon descended into the concrete jungle that is Tokyo and I learned that the name concrete jungle really does hold true more than you know. Imagine a place where everything is planned, there is not a single odd space which has been left to itself and then imagine there being no parks either. In Perth there is a park almost round every corner, whether that be a reedy-lake left in the middle of the suburbs or a small housing plot where they've let the grass grow and put in some swings and other toys. Tokyo, which spills over into the other Prefectures like Saitama, is a concrete mess of mansions, what they call fancy high rise flats, and shops. However before you sink into the doom and gloom its not all like that. Main Tokyo is like main London, there are loads of shops and city centres and lots to see with few houses, the suburbs in Tokyo are built up around the train stations, where you'll find more mini marts than you can visit and hustle and bustle, what I later learned though was that once you get away from the train lines it becomes a lot more peaceful and there is more space but more on this later.

Day one in Japan was without rest. I had only grabbed two hours sleep but that appeared to be enough to trick my mind into a new day and even getting into the evening I was still awake. We attained upstairs and wished Lucy's friend Julia a happy birthday, there was cake o_o and some interesting noms, I could write a separate blog just about the noms here and I might ¬_¬ . I made sure that the first foods we had there was a bentou but to the surprise of my anime knowledge they weren't as big a fad as I thought, they didn't get half priced by a god and fought over by a bunch of wolves and dogs... er... maybe that reference is a bit hardcore. What really surprised me was that there was a place that served up a bentou of your choice, which in my opinion is like having a sandwich takeaway, boggles the mind that one... sounds awesome *O_O*.

Day two in Japan was an exciting one. I must admit that after spending seven months apart from Lucy I was trying to make every second count and I was panicked that we weren't doing enough but that's to be expected from a time so long apart, it was especially hard to believe she was right there with me. We headed to Vie de France which is a Pan shop, Pan = Bread, however I don't say bakery because I don't believe many of the breads there make sense in the normal... sense. They have Anpan, which is bread with a sweet filling made from red kidney beans, meron pan which is normal bread dough with cookie dough pulled over the top and criss crossed on the same way you cut to present a melon and it tastes amazing O_O. They also have melon cream filled pan which is bright green. The wonderful thing about Japanese food is that they don't shy away from bright green like we might and its probably because green tea is that colour. On this day I finally got to try Anpan, there is nothing ordinary about it! We headed on to the train, the ticket systems works in the same way as transperth where you buy a card and top that up then beep the button thing, that's not a swear. We headed on some train lines, I made no effort to follow what line we were on because it was the most complicated thing I'd ever seen, and probably because I couldn't read any of the names.

We headed on down to Akihabara which is famous for anime/manga otaku and electronics otaku. The first thing I noticed as we came out were the girls dressed as maids handing out flyers and hellos for you to come to over priced cafés. Just round the corner we entered a game corner, with purely crane games in the ground floor, or UFO catchers. 

 

In the basement was purely smokey gundam gamers who couldn't hit a gun-dam thing! On the other floors there were more arcadey games including Initial D, win, but every one of them had someone playing so I went on a 3D racer instead. I came third because even though I drove well I didn't realise there a a nitro button until it was too late, but why would you expect there to be one ?_? After that we headed to an odd drums game, I say odd because I genuinely thought there was only one button; that big drum, so I messed up at the start.

Smokey Gundam room.

Overly keen to drum.

 

That's when I began realising that everything in Japan was cute or it wouldn't appear to sell. From little faces for expressions to full cute designed characters to represent companies its cute all the way. The one that got me was the Softbank dog which shows you if a café or shop has wifi, and its very cute. We headed to Gamers which is a famous and big shop selling anime, manga, games and stuffs like that. All the books in the shop had wrappings on so that you couldn't read them in the store, which is what everyone does in the convenience stores instead of buying them. We headed to the shops around this area on a hunt for more toys and interesting things. We saw a complete range of the different things people liked to buy and it wasn't so different from a collectors shop back home. There were certain areas though that were a lot more passionate about what they were selling than others though and there was a lot more of it, that's why I felt it was incredibly awesome.

We found a Mr. Doughnut, and bought some drinks... and a doughnut. I couldn't resist buying a doughnut, I'm such a sucker. So after watching Lucy impress me some more with her language skills I settled down to absorb where I was. It was hard to acknowledge where I was and I felt paranoid that I would wake up from a dream. But ignoring that we pressed on. 

 

We headed to Harujuku to look at all the lovely girls clothing. I mean there were some boys things there but I'm not fashionable about myself. If Lucy chose anything out though I would perk up and listen. We found some lolita dresses and other cute clothes, I felt incredibly self conscious going into a girls clothes shop as a Gaijin and as a bloke o_o and I'm tall there. Anyway in this one shop they played mono tone techno disney songs at the same volume as the rig's shaker room (you need double ear protection in there) and the girls in the shop, every 30 seconds would shout 'Grankurasai-masen~' and just hold that note doing various things like dropping it or rising it before silence. They were all dressed in lolita too and amongst other things it was a shop we could have gotten lost in, *ahem*.

 

The thing I learned about Harujuku is that there were a lot of black guys hanging around there, some selling things and some literally loitering on the street. There are very few black guys in Japan so I'm not sure what's going on there. It was the first day so we didn't buy anything. We walked around before heading back to the train station. There was a store on the cross roads, completely detached from anything else and it was called condom land, just gonna slide that in there... make of it what you will. We also found a Ben and Jerry's and realised that weird line of people on the other side of the pavement were queuing to enter, that confused me, surely the queue should just extent out of the door?

This concludes day one of fun times in Japan. As you might imagine it was quite surreal and different. I had a hard time understanding how narrow all the streets were and things and how when you step away from the main shops and streets is both devoid of things but not devoid of people and many other things that are hard to explain. Anyway Lucy and I have put some photos up on faceboke so you can check them out.