Knut has been to America, but has never had a real NYC steak. And boy do they impress. But WHY DO THEY NEED SUCH BIG STUFF ALL THR TIME?! 
22oz of beef equals 620g, twice the normal European platter. While . But its america.
Knut: “Does anybody actually eat all of this?
Waiter: “Some do. but you have got to exercise over a long period of time.”
Taking the train to Koya-san on a normal commuter train. Being a two hour train ride, and being accustomed to having a seat while going thus far, I first wondered if it could be the right train; besides benches along the wall, there were only four normal seats, reserved for priority passengers in each carriage.
Looking like a typical subway car, it was first when I memorized the japanese railway attendants’ extreme ways of loading the train that I understood this was just that right type of car. Luckily, our train left well before working hours was out, and we soon found seats.
It is a well known fact that most of Japan’s cafe’s and small restaurants only accept cash as form of payment. But no matter how much cash you are comfortable with stocking up in the airport, you are eventually going to run dry. So – where do you go to get more cash on your hands? If your first response was “ATM!”, and your second is “Bank!”, you are most likely to be both disappointed and confused.
Having run out of cash, and with Kari and myself in desperate need for a lunch break and coffee to increase her blood sugar level (she slowly descends into a Murakami-like stasis when the ‘out of sugar’ lights start fading away), we were both very happy when Kari finally spotted a familiar three-letter sign: “ATM”
A whole hall of robot-like ATMs, the common explicitly marked queue-line arrows with their sibling queue-poles greeted us. Luckily, there were none in line.
I randomly selected a machine. Two cute animated characters greeted me cutely (everything in this country is cute, and do whatever they do in a incredibly cute way). I entered the required data, and the machine slurped in my card into its midst.
It didn’t like it at all. It started making repeated chewing sounds, seemingly wondering what kind of weird, foreign, toxic-tasting plastic it had been presented. After a while of rumocking, the couple smiled at me, and an on-screen notice appeared:
“Your transaction is complete.”
In a strange combination of cuteness, respect and denial, the couple now bowed at me accompanied by a discontent alarm-beep, giving me my card back along with a printed receipt.
“Your card has expired or is invalid. See printed receipt for more info.”
We tried all our cards, double checking pin-codes and expiry dates, but neither VISA, nor MasterCard or Eurocard made the couple change their cute&denial routine.
If the world takes VISA, Japan is of another world (and I wouldn’t digress). Luckily our SoftBank SIMcard and Google told us why. Turns out the only places you can be sure to withdraw cash is from the Japanese Post Office and nearly all 7/11’s.
I always struggle to find a place for my umbrella. In the shop, fetching money from my wallet at the counter; I poke someone with it, leaving it on the floor by my chair in the café the waiter trips over it, and when I manage to tuck it away out of sight under my seat or in a corner somewhere, I end up forget about it and leave it behind. Hence; I never buy a expensive, good umbrella that actually serves it purpose – and shelters me from the rain. I buy crappy ones, small enough to fit into my handbag and so cheap I can afford the loss, and these shitty things collapse on me and turn inside out if there is any wind at all. But here it’s different.
Of course no one causes hazard poking about with an umbrella indoors. It has it’s place in a rack or container at the entrance of any shop, restaurant or other sort of facility. At the entrance of the public bath house (onsen) we visited, the umbrella rack was of the more advanced than it usually is; fitted with lock and key mechanism, one for each umbrella.
Spotify $&@# somehow won’t activate. I have no idea why. I made sure everything worked before boarding. So now, the 4 nicely selected playlists I should have had to relax and sleep with with aren’t here. Even worse, my new Mac hasn’t seen a single .mp3 since I got it, and my iPhone has been drenched for bits and bytes to make space for more video and images.
So ironically, I’m stuck with a quite interesting mix of:
It’s so funny it hurts.
Tip: Don’t forget about your music and headsets. And if you use that streaming media thing – be sure to activate it!
It’s 16:14 o’clock in the afternoon, and the fact that we have been at awake more or less since our departure from Oslo at 04:35 is taking its toll. Kari is sitting beside me, deep asleep with a plastic cup of red wine in her hands. Before she went to sleep, we had the Austrian Airways surprisingly good pasta, and a dialogue with the third person on our row. She is a Japanese/Austrian woman on her way to her buddhist order in the outskirts of Tokyo.
And I am trying to find something interesting to write. Partly to get so exhausted trying to find something interesting to write that I will fall into deep sleep, partly to actually find a theme or style for this travel-blog.
…As a matter of fact, I’m succeeding pretty with the exhausted part. Yeah, this’ll do for now.
We are now also officially time travelers. 15 minutes from now, our time duplicates will walk down the staircase in Oslo, forgetting and we are in the only form of stasis on earth, going back in time. We are now earlier than we were when we left. Tomorrow. No – it’s actually still this morning, we’ll get Harajuku district and our AirBnB hosts.
I have no idea what I just wrote, so I’ll stop there. I think sleep is a pretty good idea by now.
Will report back when more is settled. Oh my god, I am getting so tired. Looking forward to more hunchback / head on a string awakenings.
In the meantime, Austrian airlines has decided to let the whole plane wait in a waiting area designed for turboprop aircrafts, creating confusion and an instant stock exchange for chairs. There are seats being traded, held and shorted between families, couples and singles. The first-in-line people – you know the ones always, treating queues as a sport – a sport where the price is stuff like:
They are all happy, confident, once again having shown the world that their strategy might not be as stressless, but it gives the best benefits.
Oh, we are actually boarding. Okey dokey.
