Friday, May 27, 2011

A Bittersweet Landing in Narita

Steve here, with some important breaking news: Everyone, raise a glass. The ramen shop that so delighted us a year ago with the drunken man of many vigorous crotch gestures...is no more. As far as we can tell, it's now a laudromat.

(*SOB!*)

More on our top story in a minute. In other news, the flight 'cross the Pacific was long and gruelling but uneventful. (I mean, what 10-hour plane flight isn't long and gruelling?) No issues in immigration or baggage claim or customs, and we're now safely ensconced in the Radisson hotel in Narita.

Now that the mudane stuff is out of the way, back to our top story:

While Cathy, Susie, and Jane got up to some mystery doings at the hotel, Bob, Kelsey, Mae, Ted, and I embarked on a jaunt by to find our beloved ramen shop from a year ago. After finding nothing (except that laudromat whose storefront looked so very awfully familiar), we finally asked a couple of gas station attendants, who pointed us toward a different ramen place called "Rokkii." Some more jaunting and eventually we found it, and most of us ordered some plain ol' ramen. The joke, however, was that each order of ramen came in a vessel the size of a helmet. A helmet designed for a hippo. And that was just the regular size. I, feeling extra peckish, made the mistake of ordering the "jamboo" (jumbo) size, which was a bowl approximately the size of your average truck tire. We all made efforts nothing short of Herculean, but none of us managed to drain our bowls. Our first night in Japan, and already we've paid monstrous insult.

So I guess we'll see if our breakfast is poisoned tomorrow. Let's hope the local kami (indigenous spirits and gods) give us a bit of murder-avoiding luck, due to our frank and sincere admiration of Narita's very charming manhole covers. They got baby horses on 'em. Everybody go awwwwwww.

Tomorrow, it's off to the shinkansen ("The powerful locomotive that's faster than a speeding bullet!") to take us to Kyoto, and then I think we've got a tour scheduled soon after we arrive. And we thought this trip was going to be relaxing.

Until later, dearly beloveds.

1 comment:

  1. Shades of Bob's first trip to Japan so many moons ago when he and Jim Goldberger both feeling a little peckish at the airport decided to order what they thought was a Bento Box each. What came to the table however were about 9 Bento Boxes each on a huge rolling cart. Some problem in translation I think....By the way they did attempt to eat them all...lol

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