I was sitting around a bit disoriented at Narita International Airport on a Monday afternoon. Not only did I fail to understand one word of what everybody was saying, I could not even read one letter on anything! A couple who were family friends from Ohio gave me instructions to get on the U.S. military bus from the airport to Yokota Air Base 2 hours outside Tokyo, where they lived. I thought they had a very nice spacious apartment at the base and they informed me that they were enjoying their stint in Japan.

The next day, they dropped me off at the train station for my trip to Nagoya -- about 3-4 hours south on the Shinkansen (bullet train). My friend La Verne and I both studied at the University of the Philippines College of Music where she was on leave temporarily for a year on scholarship in Japan to study one of their ethnic instruments. She has arranged to be my tour guide in Nagoya and Kyoto. After meeting me at the train station, we headed to her apartment, a far cry from the American-style dwellings I had seen at the base. The bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom would all fit easily in a typical American-sized room. Space is a premium in Japan and claustrophobics would have a most difficult time here. I spent the rest of the evening watching sumo-wrestling matches on TV. The Japanese are as crazy about sumo-wrestling as Americans are with football. The wrestlers looked like oversized babies in diapers trying to knock each other out in a huge crib.

It took us a good part of the morning to get to Kyoto the next day. We only had time to take the bus from the train station then walk to one temple called the Silver Pagoda (or Ginkakuji). Since it was late, we decided to spend the night in a Japanese inn called a ryokan, where we had to wear some kind of Japanese robes and sleep on futon mattresses on the floor. The next morning, we visited another temple, this time the more well-known Golden Pagoda. It sat at the end of a small pond, and was almost completely covered with golden foil. Back at the train station, I went into one of the shops and decided to try my knowledge of Japanese which amounted to the one word "Ikura?" (How much?). I should have just kept my mouth shut because the extremely polite Japanese saleslady answered me back in Japanese, quoting, for all I know, a hundred bucks for a small keychain.

Of course, the high prices of just about about everything in Japan are legendary. I had a plate of noodles, a Coke and dessert at the airport restaurant for about twenty bucks. Everything is also high-tech, including the toilets which the Japanese still prefer to be placed way low on the ground. It's the ancient form of toilets which the Japanese have "upraded" by putting all sorts of high-tech gadgets inside. Even the first class section on the Shinkansen felt like the first class section on a plane, complete with small portable TV's which can be pulled out from the arm rests. In Kyoto, passenger doors of taxi cabs are opened by remote by the driver inside. The Japanese are also extremely honest. People leave their bikes right at the bus stop on the sidewalk with no locks on them. Verne told me about losing her wallet which was returned to her with every single thing in it intact. Everything has to be exactly on time in Japan. The trains are not even a minute late. I had heard that a train operator even committed suicide when he caused a train to be a few minutes late.

I believe that without a guide, I'd have been completely lost in Japan. It was the most difficult-to-get-by country I have visited so far. It was hard to find anybody who spoke English and could translate the Japanese letters for you. But looking back, it was still a fun experience to see the sights and the people in the Land of the Rising Sun.