JapanLogistics and Other Details |
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It's Japan, there is a lot of public transport that moves quickly and often.
Your biggest problem will be figuring out how to use it....
The biggest problem I had was trying to get from Narita airport, way outside Tokyo, into Tokyo itself fairly late in the evening when my flight in had been delayed.
There are frequent trains between Narita airport and Keisei Ueno during the day, but not so much late at night. Ask for help.
As for getting to Nikkō, I simply went to the train station and bought a ticket. Take the subway to the Asakusa train station. As in any country with a radically different language, it is a huge help to have a note with your desired destination and travel date and time written on it.
Lonely Planet guidebooks have very useful guidance on getting around places.
My Russian backpack rides in spacious grandeur in a nearly empty commuter train in Tokyo.
The bus drivers wear white cotton gloves. So do the railway attendants. And the police. And pretty much anyone working in public.
They drive on the left. Not that you're likely to operate a motor vehicle there, but look out so you don't get hit.
There are plenty of places to get a quick and relatively cheap meal. Lots of places have carry-out bentō box lunches. Train stations have sit-down places. They almost all have plastic replicas of the available food and drink in a display near the entrance. So, if all else fails, you can simply point!
And their names tend to be in something that looks like English but isn't....
However, much better and more atmospheric meals are to be had in the little izakayas, or taverns, in the narrow alleys underneath the rail lines outside the Shinjūkū train station.
Walk around until you find people eating something that looks good. Noodles, curry, sushi. Squeeze into the place and point at what you want. Expect no English to be spoken or understood.
The area is much like "Bladerunner", except with less rain. And fewer robots. At least when I was there.
Kind of like Tōne-Lōc and Drānō, no?
There are also some over a few of the ū's.
The first time was a business trip with Purdue University.
The second time was a networking project for EMC. That was when I wrote some TCP/IP haikus. Unfortunately, TCP/IP haikus have not yet caught on. If they would, they have the potential for significant improvements in computer networking.
The third time was for some Linux work at Misawa Air Base, way up at the northern tip of the main island of Honshū.
There is very good radio propagation into Misawa from east through central Asia, no doubt a reason for the very impressive antennas. I was jet-lagged for much of the trip, getting up at 0300 or so. Not much to do at 0300 when you're stuck on a USAF/USN base, other than stroll around the base in the dark and practice Russian by scanning the MW broadcast bands. I heard the following, with some IDs from http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ms8n-tkn/RUSSIA/flist.htm
| kHz | Station | Program |
| 549 | Tavrichanka, Primorskiy Kray | Radiostantsiya Mayak |
| 576 | Khabarovsk | Radiostantsiya Mayak |
| 612 | Primorskiy Kray | Radio VBC |
| 621 | Khabarovsk | Radio Rossiya |
| 666 | Komsomolsk, Khabarovskiy Kray | Radiostantsiya Mayak |
| 711 | Khabarovsk | Radio Vostok Rossia |
| 720 | Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk | Radiostantsiya Mayak, the strongest station in the morning |
| 783 | Tavrichanka, Primorskiy Kray | Radio Lemma |
| 810 | Razdol'noe, Primorskiy Kray | Primorskoe Radio |
| 873 | Khabarovsk | Radio Rossia |
| 927 | unknown Russian | |
| 1323 | unknown Russian | |
| 1386 | unknown Russian | Radio Liberty / VOA ? |
| 1476 | Tavrichanka | Radio Studiya O'key |
Plus several Japanese AM stations. The on-base station was AFN, Armed Forces Network, with a bizarre mixture of country music, hard-core rap and Rush Limbaugh. It seemed to have two transmitter frequencies, 1575 and 1593 kHz, with splatter covering 1539-1665 kHz!
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