Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Shinagawa dinner


And here we are outside Shinagawa Station getting hustled to a yakitori restaurant - can you see how tiny this street is? We battled the jet lag and powered through 3 hours at the airport of exchanging currency, shipping bags to Mihara (our next destination where Dean's aunt lives), and exchanging JR passes before riding 1 hour on a train to our hotel. Drew and I were amazed that Japan is so technologically advanced, but it still took an hour to get 5 train passes....the clerk did lots of hand-writing, stamping, stapling, signing, tearing and re-stapling, etc. Contrast that with the restaurant, where we rang a doorbell at the table and a waiter appeared with a tiny handheld computer to enter our order. Huh...

So I was up today at 4 am as expected, and we leave for Mihara at 9:30 to stay with Dean's family a couple of days. The Rosetta Stone was fantastic (I didn't quite finish the second disc - had a couple of hours left, dangit), but they talk WAY too fast for me to understand much of anything here. Lucas and I bought a drink and snack in the train station, and the lady had to show me the calculator before I could understand our total. Lucas saved the situation with a hearty "Arigato," though. Back to the Easy Japanese book till everybody else wakes up...

4 comments:

Pam said...

Thanks for the updates - fascinating - I am living vicariously through you!! I love your magazine blog post! Also, I found getting around Tokyo, although technologically advanced, to be somewhat exhausting.

Have fun and looking forward to more adventures. BTW, bloglovin won't let me post comments (still) so I just go directly to your website. . .I must be doing something wrong!

Have fun!

Anonymous said...

COOL!!!!!! Lucas is one smart kid ;) I bet if you ask them to slow down when they are talking, they will. They will probably be very flattered that you are attempting their language!

Robbie

Dr. Fun (AKA Sister) said...

Pam, you're right - exhausting is the word! The first 48 hours here was just planes, trains, and automobiles, and Drew said, "So far we've been here 2 days and we haven't really done anything." And I have no knowledge of Bloglovin - is that where you are now?

Dr. Fun (AKA Sister) said...

You're right, Robbie. I think I'm failing miserably and they keep saying how jouzo I am - means skilled - but I think they're just being nice. It's fun to try, though!