Sayonara Nippon

Well, the four of us (Jansuz, Praveen, Pradeep and I) spent the night in a single room for the last night. We woke up in the morning and checked out of the hotel. Then, I was on a quest to play some Pachinko before I left.

We found a place and tried to watch other people and learn what was going on, but to no avail. So the best way to learn is to sit down and play yourself. Well, the basics are that you buy balls for money and at the bottom right there is this dial that decides how strongly the balls will be shot into the machine. Then balls will randomly bounce down and the goal is to get a ball to fall through a slot in the center. Once that happens, then it kind of becomes a bonus round and you might get a bonus, but we never did :( Needless to say, it is an easy way to become very confused and lose money quickly, in other words, it's gambling!

By the end of that, we had to head to our train to Narita. The airport is quite a ways from Tokyo. We had a good time trying to spend up all of our coin yen at McDonald's because the currency exchange will only accept paper.

The flight back had some turbulence, but was otherwise pretty smooth. It took 11hrs to go from LAX to NAA but the way back took only 9 :) I had to wait for those non US citizens I was with, who were in a really long immigration line.

But I am back safe and sound and what have I learned from all of this? Well here are my top 5 useful phrases that I picked up:

5. ______ wa doko desuka? - Where is the _____?
4. Omizu - Water
3. Ikuru Desuka? - How much?
2. Sumimasen - Excuse me, Sorry, Can I bother you...
and the number 1 most useful phrase
1. Wakarimasen - I don't understand (said with a confused smile)

Well that is about it and I don't think I will be posting for a while.

Sayonara!