I am back in Yokohama after an intensive few days visiting Tokyo and the surrounding area, it is such a huge city the largest in the world and it is not possible in 5 days to visit everything. I stayed every night in a different hostel or capsule hotel, the capsule hotels are a great idea as you sleep in a small oblong box that has a TV and radio, you slide in and pull down a door and sleep, for washing they provide towels and a dressing gown and have showers on every floor. The hostels were so busy and booked up that is why i had to move every night. Tokyo was highly recommended to me and is very popular with western tourists, the highlights of the visit for me was to be on the 50th floor of the Tokyo park Hyatt hotel in the New York bar and meeting the jazz band from New York, I walked all over the place even had an appointment at the Apple store to learn about my Apple Mac computer, i took a look at the electrical stores and the temples, i am not really into the big city’s and i am happy to be out off Tokyo and back in Yokohama.
I arrived back last night and booked back into the Yokohama hostel village which is about 2000 Yen a night i think its a similar price to the uk youth hostels, this morning i visited the immigration office to make sure they would complete my application to leave and also visited the customs building to check whether i needed to complete any customs forms for my side of the travel, i then called the ships agent Nippon Express and spoke to Mr Nagata and mentioned to him that i could do immigration on my own and i didn’t need to do any customs, as he had told me last week that i had to use Nippon Express as an agent for these formalities and it would cost me, i had heard from the cruise people in london that i could do this by myself if i wanted to, Mr Nagata told me on the phone that he was ok for me to do Immigration on my own, however i have had a call from Dessey at the Cruise company in London and Nippon Express have made a complaint to the ships owner and that if i didn’t wok with Nippon Express they wouldn’t let me travel so i am a little confused, but everyone i have spoken to today seem positive so i will go with that, Dessey said they try not to board people in Japan as the agents can be difficult.
I took a phone call off DGX they are shipping the car on the same vessel as me, and Mr Kohta told me that the ship is due into port at 08:00 am tomorrow morning and hopes to leave tomorrow at about 16:00 hrs so i am meeting him at Namamugi station about half way back to Tokyo, i will also meet my friend Shin that i met in Russia as he would like some information from DGX about shipping his motorbike to South America in December.
At Namugi we will meet Mr Kuni who is our broker and he will be taking us to customs and finishing our Carne de Passage forms also known as an ATA Carne the customs then remove the car from my passport and i can then go to Yokohama on my own and start my own immigration.
I have had an amazing time in Japan very varied and i do like the lovely countryside all the huge mountains and Volcanoes, crazy fast cars, very polite people and my visit to the Toyota museum, The highlight was to be given the opportunity to speak to children in schools in Kyushu the southern island of japan and share with them my adventure and the work of streetKids International and that their are kids less fortunate than themselves.
On the ship i hope to get my blogs up to date and include more about what i was doing in Russia and a section about paperwork and stuff like that, i have now got an Eblogger account and for Canada and the US I hope to be more productive with my updates, maybe using an IPhone to send small updates more often via a website called www.ping.fm this will send what i am doing to my RamblingRat@Eblogger account, its not all up and running yet but i’ll keep you all posted. Thats about it for now, i send my love to anyone that knows me and look forward to updating you from the other side of the Pacific in Canada, i am very excited to be on a freight ship again and hope i see some big whales in the Pacific Ocean.
Tim x