And I’m off again. Boy this time
round though it’s really snuck up on me. I’ve done absolutely no research on
Japan and as always I’m feeling the rush of unprepared travel…notes to self
before traveling again; make sure you have the address where you are staying to
minimize customs hold ups, and try to learn some simple phrases instead of
being an ignorant English speaker thinking the whole world should understand you
wherever you go.
I’m on my own this time and the
feeling of vulnerability is creeping up on me. It started at the check in desk
when the check in chick was going to charge me $350 for excess baggage.
Apparently my travel agent didn’t inform them that I was in a wheelchair and
didn’t request an excess baggage exemption…another note to self; no matter how
well you know your travel agent or how many times they have booked flights for
you, always remind them of the most obvious things – you’re in a wheelchair and
you have extra luggage. Thinking that I was going to face the same thing in
Nagoya and have the language barrier to battle wasn’t the best start to the
day. I was nervous enough as it was without having to cope with that.
Surfers face the same thing and I’m
sure cyclists’ do too…excess baggage. Fortunately the wheelchair card comes out
and the sympathy vote we all hate comes in handy when the check in chick takes
pity on the handsome disablist and waves the charge. But now and again you’ll
get a middle aged, power hungry, grumpy bitch, that thinks she is doing the
airline a favour by charging
the poor handicap the full price. Like they keep tabs on stuff like that. Its
sucks not knowing whether charm or disability will get you through every time
you turn up to the airport with sports gear. I’d be in shit if I wasn’t so
charming J because inevitably I’m always about 30kgs over not
including my everyday chair.
I arrived at the isolated, brand
spanking new airport of Nagoya, after an uneventful although noisy flight. Felt
like I was stuck in a bird cage with a thousand chirping, giggling, yapping
Japanese teenagers. And what’s up with Air New Zealand and they’re shitty old
planes. Its bad enough that we have turtle speed broadband in NZ without having
to put up with a 11 hour flight in a plane that doesn’t have individual telly
screens. Do we have the only airline in the world that’s so cheap ass that we
can’t have the luxury of our own screens to pass the time away? I can think of
better ways to pass 11 hours other than being forced to watch, “Harry-I’m the
most powerful wizard in the world but I can only do 3 spells with my wand-Potter,”
or Keira Knightly in, Pride and - for Christ sake would you just tell the bloke
you love him so we can go home - Prejudice, or, or, geez I can’t remember what
the last movie was…must have been a goodin.
Anyway people…I’M IN JAPAN! I’m
stoked and really excited. I’m primarily here to play rugby for a Japanese club
team but I hope to get an insight as to how life is here. I’m in the airport at
the moment and it’s what I expected, sparkling clean, sterile and well
organized. I’m heading North to Sendai where I will train with the team for 4
days. I’m staying at a hotel but have no idea how much down time I’ll have.
Toru, the guy who set this trip up,
came down to Christchurch back in 2002, I think it was, and we have been
emailing ever since. I missed the trip to Japan the Wheel Blacks did in 2003
and have yearned to come here ever since. Toru is extremely humble and is
really excited to have me here. I can guess how Tony Brown and Matua Parkinson
feel when they come here to play rugby. The Japanese, especially Toru, put you
up on a pedestal and I don’t mind that one bit. Particularly when they put you
up in the swankiest hotel in Sendai. Even for just 1 night, it was awesome to
chill out in a sweet as hotel after a long day.
I was straight into it the next day.
A 9am pick up and it was off to meet the team and have a sess. My team is
called, Super Sonic, and Toru reckons they aren’t very good. I gave them a few
tips put them through a few drills and I reckon they’re alright. I felt ok
considering the flight and all. We trained for 3 hours and then headed off to
lunch. I went the safe way and got the seafood spaghetti. There will be plenty
of opportunity to sample the local cuisine later.
I got dropped off at my next hotel
and damn I feel very privileged. This place is in the heart of downtown Sendai,
I’m on the 13th floor with a great view and the room is choice…but
no English channels on the idiot box. Glad I brought a good book, “The World
According To Geremy Clarkson,” and my DVD’s. Toru has hooked me up.
Just before I headed out to get a
taste of city life I booked a massage, sussed out where I can buy beer (just
across the road) and dug out my beanie…it was snowing earlier.
Downtown Sendai…hmmm. Well there
were lots of Japanese people, but it didn’t feel weird. There’s not much to say
really because it was just like cruising down Queen St. No, that’s not fair, it
was much flatter than Queen St.
It was like any other downtown area
I’ve been in except the signs were in Japanese writing. I love that style of
writing. I reckon you could write the foulest thing imaginable in Japanese and
it would still look like art. I want to say more but then I’d be rambling…the
massage was stink and cost me $70......the beer was tip top.
Well so far it’s all been just
peachy. I feel like a celebrity. They have put me up in a swish hotel, all
meals are provided and I really couldn’t ask for more. In fact its lead to a
kinda dull experience when it comes to writing. Everything has been set out,
there’s been no cock ups, I get picked up and taken around the place, get
shouted lunch and a massage’s (clothes on) and um yeah. Usually I have heaps of
stories and those stories come from unprepared adventures and stuff ups,
unfortunately that hasn’t happened so far on this trip.
The two stories I do have for you
though revolve around food. After training I was dropped off at my hotel and
wasn’t quite ready to hit the sack or zombie out in front of Japanese TV, plus
I hadn’t eaten. So off I went on my own down the street in 2 degrees weather at
10:30pm to find some tucker. The easy option would have been to go to Mo’s and
sample some of their tasty burgers and wash them down with a fine beverage.
Nah…my taste for adventure overcame me and I trudged on not quite knowing what
I was looking for, getting colder by the minute. 2 blocks later and I had to
find somewhere fast. My 100yen mittens were doing little to curb the frost-bite
so I did what any harden traveler does, turned down a side street. Hmm side
streets, they can be hit and miss sometimes. Sometimes you find the treasures that
make traveling what it is and other times you just find a side street.
Well, soon enough I found my prize, a
pokey wee place that appealed to no-one but for some reason I got a good vibe
from it. I thought it was great that they had pictures on their menus, I’d just
point, batter my eyelashes and then I’d be the nephew of Bob. So I thought. I
sat down in the booth, comfy as, waitress came over and I pointed. She babbled
a procession of Japanese back to me so I pointed again, she babbled again god
knows what and I started having doubts as to whether I’d be eating this night.
I mean how bloody hard can it be there’s a picture…plain and simple. Maybe she’d
just finished an apprentiship at McD’s and was asking me if I wanted fries or
did I want the combo. I hadn’t even ordered my beer yet…and that didn’t have a
picture.
I got my beer…a 500ml Asahi, just
like those old school DB bottles you get in a crate that Dad drank…and you
stole. Asahi is a nice drop but after training and on an empty stomach a flagon
of it was going to go down hard. I actually ordered the sheila’s size, being
the metrosexual I am, but instead I had to chug down the shearer’s bottle. I
couldn’t exactly say, “pardon me you have seemingly given me the wrong size
beverage,” I was happy just to get something and it didn’t even improve my
understanding of Japanese nor help my extending waistline but it was a good
time killer. And this is where the story ends. My meal turned up and looked
exactly like the picture and it was so bloody damn good that I left the
restaurant feeling very content and fat. Once again all went to plan…boring eh.
The next story also involves food.
The hotel I’m staying in has 3 restaurants and I was supplied with meal
voucher’s for either breakfast or if you slept in because you were watched too
much Japanese TV the night before and missed breaky, you could use it for
lunch…sweet. What’s the catch? Breakfast is pretty standard…cheap. But when it
comes to lunch in an expensive hotel they aint gonna give you the run of the
menu now are they…no because if they did, fat white people would be like pigs
in poo…very happy. No they give you the, “set menu”…I went to the “European
food” restaurant. Picture the
setting. Posh as décor, waiters educated at the Linwood Finishing Academy,
perfectly set tables on white table cloths and the best cutlery; 5 forks, 7
knives and 6 spoons, all of which were taken away upon presentation of “the
voucher,” and replaced with plastic, used I think, utensils. The set menu was;
soup and salad starter served in bowls the size of shot glasses, followed by
the main; a dirty ole hamburger patty with a slobbering of melted cheese, 5
cold wedges and 3 beans, and on a separate plate, rice (standard…we are in
Asia) and dark brown curry sauce. Dessert was a slice (the size of my middle
finger) of spongy sponge stuff and a tiramisu thing in a bowl the diameter of a
50c piece. No expense spared there folks. I mean a hamburger patty??? Do
Japanese people think that we actually enjoy eating that fat filled, tasteless,
ground up cows leftovers? Yeah the Japanese eat some pretty strange stuff but I
don’t see many of them getting too excited about dirty ole burgers.
Food was a common theme throughout
the trip actually. Japanese food is so yummy. I loved it and looked forward to
every meal and treated them as if they were an adventure. However, I’m not so
keen on the raw fish and roe for breaky. I opted for the honky breakfast that
time around. My host Toru made it fun by choosing the meals for me. I had no
idea what I was about to eat but he never let me down.
After a great time in Sendai it was
time to head to Osaka for the Japanese Wheelchair Rugby Nationals. We got there
a few days early and Toru hooked me up at another swanky hotel in the Universal
Studio district.
What a place! The hotel was 1st
class and within 100m of Universal Studios. On our doorstep was 1000
restaurants, 500 shops, Universal Studios and the train station was 20m away.
We caught accessible trains the whole way from the airport to the hotel. At
each stop the wee conductor man would come out with his wee ramp and blow his
wee whistle. I didn’t even need the ramp but they kinda freaked out when I
jumped off the train before he got the ramp to us. So I played their wee game
and pretended to be more disabled than I am. I think they get a buzz out of
helping people because the whole trip I was waited on hand and foot. Probably
more importantly, my entire trip was accessible. They go out of there way to
cater for disabled people and in particular wheelchair users.
This was made blaringly obvious when
we turned up to the tournament venue. This place was custom made to cater to
disabled sports people. The complex included 2 full size basketball courts, a pool,
ten pin bowling alley, a restaurant and accommodation for 100 people, all in 1
place. It puts every where else to shame. I’ve not even come across anywhere as
good in America. Lil ole NZ is in the dark ages when it comes to this stuff. It
was so good to roll out of bed, go 50m to breakfast then another 20m to the
gym.
We still had a day to kill before
the tournament started so Toru and I jumped on a train and headed to Osaka
Castle. It wasn’t a castle as you’d imagine but a great authentic Japanese
building on top of this huge hill. That’s one thing I really wanted to see and
didn’t, Japanese architecture. I love it and the next time I go I’ll venture
out into the countryside to get a taste of it. Who can remember the TV show,
Monkey Magic? Well I do and it was my favorite. I wanted to see some of that
sort of stuff…small villages, Japanese gardens etc. However Osaka castle
savored my appetite a little although Mr. Miagi did a way better job of his
back yard.
I found my name sake (that’s sake as in for goodness sake
not sake as in the drink sake) inside the castle. Well not really name sake but
I don’t know what to call it. Anyway here’s the connection; Masamune Date was the
feudal Lord of Sendai Castle. He was a mean MoFo and lost the sight in his
right eye when he was very young and with reverence and fear was called Dokugan
ryu or One Eyed Dragon. Yeah and, you say. Well yours truly lost the sight in
his right eye at a young age and all the boys reckon I’m as angry as a flaming
dragon. So maybe I was him in a past life. It would explain my ninja like
reflexes and dragon like temper.
So back to the castle. It was a museum and apart from heaps
of art, swords and army fighting garb it didn’t have much else. It was cool and
all but I don’t really do museums. ADHD sets in after 10 minutes and I start
wandering off or touching things I’m not supposed to. They weren’t to impressed
when I dropped one of the samurai swords.
So that’s where my story ends. We came 3rd in the
tournament and afterwards Toru put me up at the Hyatt for a night of opulence
and indulgence. We pigged out on an 8 course Japanese feed and washed it down
with beer, wine and sake.
I flew out the next day thoroughly chuffed with my efforts
at the tournament and totally stoked with my experience. Japan tops the charts
for me and I can’t wait to go back there.
Sionara
