I liked flying with Continental. I did not like flying with United. Continental was pretty much the best all around. I remember my only international flight with United being that I did not want to fly with them again. United and Continental have sort of merged now and even though Continental had a better reputation they are mostly known by as United by now.
Anamanaguchi - Just Like the Movies
The president greets you on every flight to let you know how hard you are at working and that he hopes you enjoy your flight. They are doing their absolutely highest to serve you. Like making checked-baggage extra so the overhead bins are completely filled if you are one of the last to get on the plane. Or that on the 40 minute flight to Houston water was provided but soft drinks cost extra. Or that the in-flight entertainment was provided by Direct TV with the white on black letters in the middle of the screen, "Your DirectTV demo is about to expire. Please swipe your credit card to unlock all the great content." It stood staring you in the place and actually went on for quite a bit longer than 15 minutes.
The Flight Attendants actually announced seperately how you could buy the entertainment ($14.99 I believe.) Also that they couldn't do beverage service on the 40 minute flight due to turbulence. Oh there's absolutely no way to turn this bright hateful advertisement a foot from your face apart without paying for it. So that was swell.
The flight from Houston to Narita had Continental's normal service of a bunch of movies and TV shows on demand for free. And the drinks didn't cost nothing unless you needed to get hhhhaaaammmeeerrrreddd. What caught me upon sitting down was the absolute feeling in my gut that the chairs were an inch closer together than they were before. I guess to give imputus to the now outnumbering ECONOMY PLUS seats with extra legroom or. as I would find out on my return flight. the amount actually comfortable for a normal human being.
The food was also terrible am I right?
I watched 2 films on the way over. The Debt.
Now you've seen The Debt. Glad I didn't pay to watch the 2 hour version. The other movie was The Last King of Scotland. I always imagined/got the impression it was about a crazy African Dictator obsessed with Scotland. Instead it's about an unstable African Dictator's Scottish doctor. It was alright I suppose.
But hey Japan. A few hours before I left I got an email from a dude I was meeting saying he wanted Zataran's Jamabalya mix. I then checked online, debated about being stopped in customs, then proceeded to buy it and throw it in my suitcase. At customs I held it out in preparation that they would throw it away. They looked it for 2 seconds then said, WELCOME TO JAPAN.
I jumped on the Keisei armed with a plain old Ooocha tea. I queued up puffyshoes - Tokio. I threw Dragon Quest IV into my DS. I was going to do this right. I liked the beverage. I liked the train advertisements. The train wasn't that crowded. The music was great.
I guess I'm done with Dragon Quest. It couldn't hold my interest as anything other than a way to waste time. I needed to waste time as a threw in another nauseating stick of gum in my mouth to help take replace motion sickness with sickness derived from terrible gum. Next to me where a group of Chinese women that one of them got up at every single stop to recheck the map. I should have probably tried to talk to them. On each of them they had a large roller suitcase and at least 3 bags hanging from their arms. Couldn't tell if they were coming or going or moving. I think they eventually got off before Nippori so I hope they knew where they were going.
I got off at Nippori and changed to the Yamanote. I was going to the farthest possible station before you start going back around, Meguro. I ended up passing the station where I would be staying that night Ugusadani. I'm not entirely sure that's the station name but I am not going to check.
I surprised the girl with my prescence and then was told to come back in an hour. So I hauled myself north of Meguro station with my ugly ugly backpack and large red suitcase. It had started to rain lightly. The weather was a complete 180 from Texas 24 hours earlier. In Texas I had dressed for cold on Wednesday drove to the gas station and had to rip off all my layers because it was a little below 80 degrees. Now in Tokyo it was 1 degree.
I ended up spending 20 minutes standing behind the girl's store looking unwashed, wet, and tired. She appeared suddenly. It had started to just barely snow. I breathed in deep and felt the Tokyo in my lungs and my eyes and under my feet. I was comfortable again.
Place had a nice atmosphere. I had pretty decent spinach, tomato curry to prepare me for once again having YamiYami. The girl had an omelet rice a little under 1200 calories worth of food. We were both expecting much smaller portions than we got. The staff seemed nervous that I was white (or unwashed and haggered (or both)). We thanked them and got on the train all the way back to Uguisudani (now I've checked it.) I reflected on this circling I had already done and thought if it would happen again.
We chose Uguisudani because St. Moritz Tera looked nice from the website and was cheap. The problem with UGDN is it's more of a red light district for prostitutes and salarymen than for couples. In what will seem like a bizarre sentence I felt safer in Kabukicho than I did there. Decided against taking pictures to and from the station despite how kind of neat the area around it was.
Either way we couldn't go yet. Check in wouldn't start until 10 and it was 9. I decided to finally make the girl see Minami-Senju. The area has a real mystic feeling. Quiet and reserved. It's also known for it's large homeless population. From Ueno we managed to deal with getting stuck on the train after a suicide. It didn't matter since we needed to waste time. It did matter because we were on an ultra crowded train with a huge suitcase.
"This is pretty but it's cold." "Guess let's go to the hotel." All the rooms were filled so we sat down in the waiting area. Regulations a few years back made some love hotels clean up their act. Not in terms of service which can be great, but in how the business runs. We had to sign a guestbook which I then questioned why the girl put her real name. Also right after we sat down to wait for 10PM about 6 other couples/pairs of people came in.
The TV had 8 channels of pornography (a new record!), the anime channel showing the original Gundam, and one variety show. I ended up messing with their radio system that had just under 300 stations. It had plenty of midi remixes with normal songs. It had a station devoted to the "GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR STORE" music that is ever popular at closing time. Tank Yu Far Shoping.
The main bonus of LH versus normal hotels is you pay for the room not per person. So it costs you around 10,000 yen from 10pm to 11am. You also get access to wide variety of expensive shampoo, conditioner, body soap, and hair and body products for free. Half of them you can call the front desk and they'll bring up your favorite kind of s and c for free. Either way this room had this:
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