My feelings about going to Japan

I remember I went to Japan at the end of October 2018, one year before the epidemic.

This is my first time going abroad, and my brother helped me get the visa and everything else. Not traveling, but accompanying my brother to Japan for medical treatment. My brother suffered from a herniated intervertebral disc. I heard that there is a kind of surgery in Japan that is very effective in treating it, so I contacted the other hospital to have the surgery. Although there are many hospitals in China that can do it, my brother still believes in Japanese medical technology.

It was already afternoon when the plane landed at Kansai Airport. Kansai Airport was built on land reclamation. When it landed, it felt like it was flying into the sea, which really made people nervous. After getting off the plane and taking the shuttle bus to go through customs procedures, the first thing I felt was that it was not cold at all. I had a pair of long johns underneath, a shirt and a jacket on top. This outfit was quite suitable. After I came back, I checked the map and found that Osaka and Nara have similar latitudes to our country's Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, so the temperatures are also similar. There are more Chinese-speaking people than Japanese-speaking people in the immigration hall. After half a day of gesticulating and messy handwriting with the staff, I finally left the airport. The translator from the hospital we contacted in advance outside the airport came to pick us up. She was a Northeastern girl who studied in Japan and worked part-time as a translator in this hospital. She was quiet and pretty, but I forgot her name. The car that came to pick us up was a black Toyota business car. The driver was an uncle in his fifties. He stood under the car waiting early, bowed, smiled and greeted us, and opened the door for us. The uncle did not neglect the service just because he was older than us. The car was driving on the highway to Nara. The translator sat in the passenger seat and briefly introduced the arrangements for the next few days to us. Along the way, I kept looking at this relatively unfamiliar city and road outside. Most of the speed limit signs on Japanese highways are 80. , but I looked at the car's speedometer and it was already over 100, so I asked the translator if he was speeding? The translator exchanged a few words with the driver and then told me that in Japan there is no penalty for speeding up to 20%, so drivers generally speed. It seems that drivers all over the world are the same when it comes to driving fast, even the Japanese, who are considered the most disciplined.

The hotel is next to the subway station in Nara. The name seems to be called Kintetsu Hotel, which means the hotel next to the subway station. It is similar to domestic express hotels. This hotel is one that my brother stayed here in advance in China. I contacted someone from Shanghai who originally contacted me to stay in a B&B. Because this time happens to be the maple leaf season in Japan from north to south, there are more people coming to see the maple leaves, and B&Bs cannot be booked during the peak tourist season. It was almost dark when we arrived at the hotel. The driver got out of the car and opened the door for us, and then stood by the door while we carried our luggage ourselves, because everyone was carrying it on one shoulder. The translator went in with us to check in, and the driver was waiting at the door. During the peak tourist season, hotels are quite expensive, with a room costing about RMB 1,000. After finishing the formalities and going upstairs, I turned around and said goodbye, the beautiful translator, and discovered a detail: the driver had been standing by the car door watching us as he watched us go upstairs.

With a "ding" sound, the elevator door opened, and an old woman with gray hair appeared at the door. She must be at least 60 years old. She bowed and said hello while blocking the elevator door with her hand to let us out. elevator. From the rag in her hand, I judged that she was a cleaning lady in the hotel. I was surprised by the proactive service awareness of a cleaning staff. I felt very guilty for an old man of this age to serve me. We hurriedly nodded like chickens flying over rice, said thank you and slipped out of the elevator to find our own rooms. When I got to the room, I discovered that it was a large bed room similar to that in China. The size of the bed was just right for me, who is 170cm tall, to lie down on, but my brother, who is 183cm tall, felt like he was standing on top of the sky, and the two of us were still a bit cramped. Later I found out that this room was a single room. The room was cold and had no heating. He relied on air conditioning. There was an air humidifier on the table and a small LCD TV hanging on the wall. Moreover, there are only a few TV channels to watch, and if you want to watch more, you need to pay a fee. In addition to being clean and tidy, the configuration is really sorry for the price, and it can't be helped in the tourist area.

The hotel does not provide lunch and dinner, so we plan to go out for a meal. When we came to the elevator, we met the old aunt who was doing the cleaning again. When she saw us coming, she immediately bowed to say hello and pressed the elevator button for us. When the elevator arrived and we went up, she kept bowing until the elevator door closed. We went downstairs with a sense of guilt and fear. When we left the hotel, we could see that the vending machines on the roadside were all lit up, which was very eye-catching.

It has to be said that there are so many vending machines in Japan. If you stand next to this machine, you can see the next one. Moreover, the machine that sells drinks depends on whether the price tag of the drink inside has a bright red or blue light. Blue means cold drinks and red means hot drinks. This is what I discovered after buying it several times, and it is worth learning from domestically. Living in a foreign country where you are not familiar with, and you don’t know what to eat, you are overthinking authentic Japanese food. There were quite a lot of people at a noodle shop not far from the hotel, so we decided to eat there. As soon as you enter, there are two vending machines in the hallway. There are quite a few people coming in to eat noodles, mostly working people. When the waiter came over, we planned to order food, and after another round of chatting, we realized that the two vending machines at the door were ordering machines, and there were no ordering machines inside. We went back to the machine to order food, and the operation was as fierce as a tiger's. As a result, there was a popping sound, and the 100,000 yen bill that was put in turned into a zero line. Oh my god, it turned out that I chose to change change instead of ordering food. After tinkering for a while, it didn't work. The waiter couldn't stand it anymore and came out to help us order two noodles. It didn’t take long and the noodles arrived, which is what we often call udon noodles. Authentic Japanese udon noodles, to be honest, they really don’t taste good. After dinner, we returned to the hotel to rest, turned on the air conditioner and heater, and the two of them squeezed into the large single bed to sleep on their first day in Japan. (To be continued)