Day 1 - The Share House

On our Own

Here's the thing. We were supposed to have a guide that would bring us from the Airport to the Share House, since it isn't exactly close by. But since we arrived at midnight instead of 3:30pm, nobody was there. We knew this would happen, since public transit in Japan stops around 8pm.

Luckily, our Share House co-ordinators (World Unite!) sent us detailed instructions on how to get to the share house. In general, we had to:

1. Take the shuttle back to the airport

2. Take a bus from Narita Airport to Tokyo Station

   • With assistance from airport staff, we found the bus station quickly and bought our tickets then got on the bus. 65 minute bus ride.

3. Take a subway from Tokyo Station to Kiba Station

4. Walk from Kiba Station to the Share House

The instructions were pretty good, but we ran into a couple surprises along the way.

The Pasmo Card

For those who don't know, the Pasmo Card is basically just a card to load funds onto that can be used for a variety of things. One of the main use cases is for public transit (Trains, Buses, etc...). Our instructions from World Unite! said to just get a Pasmo Card and take the subway, but turns out it was more difficult than that.

Due to a chip shortage, you must register for a Pasmo card instead of being able to get one at a machine. This means showing ID to a ticket office, and having them make a card with your name on it. Luckily, each subway station has someone in a booth for assistance. They were able to point us to the nearest ticket office.

Once there, we asked for a Pasmo card and the agent asked for ID. We decided to hand over our shiny new Residence cards instead of our passports. He must have been expecting passports though, because he gave the card a strange look, and then went to show his coworkers. They all looked equally confused.

Eventually they pulled out this massive multi-hundred page manual and flipped to the right page, got us the right forms, and we filled everything out + loaded some funds.

The Share House

The rest of the journey was uneventful. We made a wrong turn and wasted about 20 minutes, but apart from that it was smooth. Some instructions were unclear because places had shut down since they were written, but luckily I had downloaded the local map to my phone using WiFi earlier.

Once we arrived, we lugged our heavy luggage up three flights of stairs to get inside, and then down a flight of stairs once inside to get to our room. We chose the dorm style rooms, where there are 8 beds in a room. For our floor, there are 2 of these rooms, along with a small kitchen, bathroom, and shower.

Turns out, one of our roommates is also Canadian, from Ajax!

Random Interesting Things

Bicycles aren't locked

In Japan, people just park their bicycles wherever, and don't bother locking them! Marlena tells me that it's both because of general low theft in Japan, and also that all bikes need to be registered.

Service Culture

When we left the hotel, there were lots of people to help. They brought our bags to the bus, and the hotel people also waved our bus away and bowed as we left.

Similar for the Narita -> Tokyo bus, there were a bunch of people there to help unload the bus and make sure everybody got the right bags. Whereas in Canada, it would just be the bus driver doing the work, here there were multiple people doing it.

Vending Machines

I already knew this, but Vending Machines are everywhere, and have a huge variety. The drinks are pretty cheap too, around $1 CAD.

Narrow Roads and Tall Highways

Everything is smaller in Japan, including the cars and roads. Everything is much narrower, and driving in Japan seems daunting compared to Canada because of how precise you would have to be. The smaller cars help with that though.

Also, because of the lack of space, there are situations where highways get stacked. From what I could tell, the top level is the faster highway, and the second level is the slower highway meant for commuter traffic.

The next post is here: Day 2