At the airport in Tokyo they took my fingerprints and a picture of my face. At the baggage claim they controlled the content of my backpack. The officer wondered about the white powder that I put in a small plastic jar. He read the label (“Vitamin D”) and he continued to search my backpack. (Actually I put cretin in the jar, so maybe you just need to write “vitamin” on the bottle and you can get anything through the check;)
At an international ATM I got Japanese Yen and continued to the metro ticket vending machine. One service woman waited at each ATM to help customers buying the ticket! I should have asked her, whether I could use a daily metro pass from the airport. I had to take two different lines, but only one train, which confused me a little bit. Why didn’t they give it the same name if the train stays the same? Around 3pm I felt so tired, that I almost fall asleep in the metro.
I got of at Asakusabashi station, and remarked they offer a free toilet in the metro station. I think the “Human Development Index” should include how many public toilets per citizen a city/country offers. Arrows on the floor of the metro station indicate on which side to walk. Normally people walk on the left side (Japan has Linksverkehr ).
My accommodation, the Anne hostel looks very nice and has a very friendly staff. They even write the name on a label and put it next to one’s bed! I put my backpack on a Ablage over the Fußteil of the bed. The toilet offers more functionalities than European toilets: water to clean and hot air to dry your Hinterteil . Maybe the Japanese people invented those futuristic toilets to compensate the quality of the toilet paper, which falls apart when looking at it.
I met Chiho, who lived three doors next to me in Paris, and her friend Yosuke at Tokyo station. Chiho give me the newest Detective Conan book in Japanese as a gift, Yosuke gave me a bean sweets, and I gave them French cookies in return. We went to eat ramen (traditional Japanese soup). At the shop we chose our meal at a ticket vending machine, paid at the machine and gave the recipe to the waitress. We didn’t have to wait long until the ramen arrived. It tasted very good.
We then changed to a sake (Japanese rice wine) bar and ordered a three-glass sample for everyone. The waitress gave us four Cheese samples as well, and Chiho explained, that they want to encourage people to drink sake, as the consumption dropped since some years. I became tired again, so we said goodbye and I returned to the hostel, directly going to bed.