Auckland

Somehow I think that the Japanese would close down their country for foreigners if it weren't for economical reasons.

Interesting fact #1: The normal subway to Tokyo's Narita International Airport leaves every two hours and takes 90 minutes from the closest station in town, which itself is about 30min away from the centre.

Interesting fact #2: The International Airport of the biggest city in the world closes at 11PM. Every day, the whole building is locked up until the early morning. (Thank you Mustafa btw for painfully discovering this one day before I left!)

Anyway I made it to the airport.
24 minutes before my flight left.
I was pretty sure I'd miss it, since boarding already started end everything but the Air Newzealand staff looked on their watch, made a couple of phone calls and said it was okay. I was relieved, until I mentioned that my luggage should be checked through to Melbourne. The woman stopped typing as if I had hit her on the head with a baseball bat. Slowly she rose her eyes and looked at me: "Melbourne?" I replied: "Yes, I'm transfering to Melbourne in Auckland, I'm not gonna stay in NZ." By this time the other girls got to know what I demanded and a lot of chattering on the phone happened and I was asked to present a lot of documents which were all unprinted in my email account. Of course I had a confirmed booking from Air NZ in Shanghai for Melbourne and of course I had a confirmed visa for Australia. But in their system they couldn't find either. 15min until my plane leaves.
They said: "Sorry, but you have to go now to catch your plane, please sort it out with Air NZ in Auckland." I thought, better than staying here and went with one of Japanese girls running through crew security checkin, etc. And barely made it.

I thought everything will be fine in Auckland, it's their headquarter and they'll know what to do.

In Auckland the immigration officer is checking my passport and immigration card and casually asks me how long I was staying. I replied: "Only 3 hours, I'm flying to Melbourne this afternoon." She looked at me and said: "Oh, is that so? Can I see your ticket please?" D'oh! Not good. I tried to explain her that I had to sort that out but she demanded a ticket. I remembered that originally the next flight booked was Auckland -> Honolulu and looked through my documents for the schedule. Unfortunately the print-out that I had with my was from the 10. August '08, before I left. And on this sheet of paper the flight was still scheduled for the 31. of March, she didn't like that and just said: "I'm sorry but at the moment you don't meet the requirements to immigrate here, please follow me."

I was led to a waiting room where a couple of shady men were hanging around with similar our more severe problems. After some time I got on the phone with an Air Newzealand person somewhere and after some 2 hours of talking and giving her information all my tickets got rescheduled and I could go and immigrate: "Good news Mr. Arnold, you have been issued a 90 day visa." Thank you very much, I'm leaving in 45 minutes and can't come back to NZ due to the rtw-ticket regulations.

Anyway I made it to Australia.

And I even got a pic from NZ!
Therefor I lost my sunglasses at Melbourne airport.

Japan Picture Update

Some pictures. A couple from the sakura and bamboo in Kyoto, most of them from Tokyo and the fish market there.

Nara in one line: It's Kyoto in small with deer.

Osaka in one line: It's Tokyo in small.

Kyoto

You'll get the Tokyo pics after I spent my final Japan time there before going on. There are sill many things I need to visit in this tiny 30 million-biggest-city-on-this-planet.

Yesterday I came from Tokyo to Nara but I'll tell you about this place when I move on.

First of all let's start with my (almost not-) departure of Beijing. It all started in Chengdu, where I got the mission to try the roast duck where it is originally from -Beijing- and compare it to the one we had in Chengdu. On my last evening we still had not found the time to go and get. It seemed like the last chance. But it got later and later and we weren't ready to head out. Finally at 10.30pm we made it. But it seems all the roast duck restaurants close early in Beijing. After Mari called about a dozen places we gave up. My flight to Tokyo was scheduled for 2.15pm the next afternoon, that should be late enough to inhale on of those birds for lunch. Somehow it got later again and it wasn't until about noon that we made it to the restaurant. At 12.30 we were served a delicious roast duck, but time was running. When I got in the cab at 1.00 for the one-hour ride to the airport I knew it would be tough. Especially since my cab driver seemed to not have slept the last night and was dozing off while driving on the highway. So we crept along on the right lane and I was getting nervous. When I informed the Japanese ground staff from ANA that my flight was leaving in about 20 minutes I felt like being in a beehive at once. People swarmed out, phones rang and I was hurried through corridors with since like 'Staff only' or 'No admittance' on their previously locked doors. It worked - in a couple of minutes I got to my gate, only to find out in the plane that my seat was double-booked and a Japanese businessman was sitting there chatting with his neighbor. The ANA stewardess taking care of the situation bowed and apologized about a thousand times - gomenasei - and finally she decided that one of us would be flying business class. She looked at me checking out my outfit and shook her head slightly. Then she asked the Japanese guy if he would mind flying business class. Of course he wouldn't mind. Damn - backpackers never get upgraded.
But at least I made it.

After a couple of days in Tokyo I took 123bus' night bus to Kyoto and moved in at Tani-sans old and nit very clean but very comfortable old Japanese-style hostel.
There are about 45832 temples, 871234 shrines and many other things to visit in Kyoto, zen gardens, rock parks, palaces, castles, museums, whatever.
I could give you detailed information about everything I visited, it would look more or less like this for every place:
The fine temple of Daitoku-ji was first built in 1319 by Himura Kenshin for the buddhist sect of battousai. It was burnt to the grounds in the Shogun-war 1665 and rebuilt 5 years later. In the edo-period it was again burnt down and rebuilt. 500Yen entrance fee.

Now you only have to change the names and dates and that's it. I'll only provide you with the wiki links (as far as available) to save my internet time (which is insanely expensive in Japan).

Slight change of plans: abort blogging due to internet and computer in this (f***ing expensive) internet cafe not working correctly. It's a shame. If you look at Japan everything seems to be in perfect order, clean, safe and comfortable. But when you're actually there you notice that many things only look perfect and are actually not working. First thing is: internet. I'm sitting in a posh cafe, polished chrome ashtray, free coke with ice from a crystal glass, quiet jazz-lounge music filling the room around comfy leather chairs, decent flat screens. Looks perfect. But the computer (looking brand new) is so slow it's amazing that the Norton 2003 (didn't happen much in the last 6 years of information technology!) doesn't stop it completely. Now imagine starting up the first generation MS Internet Explorer. Or even inserting your 4GB CF-card. Don't you dare to even think of rotating one of those 10megapixels pictures. Sad, very sad. If I remember China where every McDonald's, Starbucks, restaurant and cafe had free and fast wifi for anybody to use. Perhaps you might say: 'Yeah, but come on, you're in Nara, that's only a small town with it's 350.000 people.' But it's been the same in Kyoto and Tokyo. Shame on you Japan. You are developing all this stuff! Why don't you use it? Perhaps you should try getting one of your Shinto gods to work on this issue.


Wall decoration in the Nijo-jo


The bike I raced though Kyoto


Kinkaku-ji


Kimonos on their way to the temple


street leading up to the temple, one of the most popular sites for the Japanese coming to Kyoto


Kiyomizu-dera, built on some 140 wooden columns, with the famous love shrine


Fushimi Inari-taisha, probably this vast shrine complex stretching over a hill is the most impressive sight in Kyoto with thousands of red gates placed there by families to get a special wish fulfilled and all the kitsune lining the ways and the shrines




it's main gate


I can't even type without having the computer stop. Sad.
Perhaps I'll get lucky in Hiroshima. Got lots more pictures but even this took me more than two hours. That was my dinner money :-(
I apologize for any spelling erros but I'm not able to check. Whenever I start scrolling the conputer freezes for about 3 minutes.