I woke up a little later than I should have and rushed out to the subway station to meet Jack. We were going separate places but planned on meeting up and at least traveling to the airport together. I forgot several things on my journey:
1) There is a 15 minute walk from the hotel to the subway station. Make this 30 minutes if you walk the wrong direction.
2) The Shinjuku station is gigantic, and it takes 15 minutes to walk from the platform to the first exit.
3) There are multiple versions of "Shinjuku South Exit" depending on if you are looking for the city metro or the JR line, the New South or Old South Exit, or the South Exit Plaza.
Long story short, I was already late by the time I got to the correct place and spent about 30 more minutes looking for the flower shop we were supposed to meet by. Honest to God there are no flower shops anywhere near Shinjuku Station, but hey!
Unfortunately I didn't catch up with Jack and rode the train myself. Luckily I talked to him at the airport via Facebook (living in the future is nice!) and he was also late and did more or less the same thing. Oh well!
The plane to Melbourne, Australia was quite a bit longer than I had expected, and JetStar is not even on the same playing field as Emirates Airlines. That said, I met a guy who was returning home to Melbourne and we had a good conversation. It made the flight go by and I learned a lot about the city. I was served food on the plane, one of only a handful of people (thanks travel agent!) but honestly I would have done better buying food at a 7-11 and bringing it on. Like I said, the food at 7-11 is surprisingly good!
I got to Melbourne and after passing through customs walked out of the airport into the cool, winter night. I was wearing a t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops, and quickly realized I would need a jacket here. I rode the SkyBus from the airport to near downtown, and Cas told me we could share a taxi as he was going toward my hostel. First we stopped and grabbed a burger at Hungry Jack, the Australian version of Burger King. A quick consult of the internets tells me:
When Burger King moved to expand its operations into Australia, it found that its business name was already trademarked by a takeaway food shop in Adelaide.[1] As a result, Burger King provided the Australian franchisee, Jack Cowin, with a list of possible alternative names derived from pre-existing trademarks already registered by Burger King and its then corporate parent Pillsbury that could be used to name the Australian restaurants. Cowin selected the "Hungry Jack" brand name, one of Pillsbury's U.S. pancake mixture products, and slightly changed the name to a possessive form by adding an apostrophe and "s" to form the new name "Hungry Jack's".
Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_Jack%27sGood sandwich, for fast food. I had some kind of chicken sandwich they had to cook on the spot, so it was absolutely fresh. Starting off my Australia visit healthy!
We hailed a taxi and went most of the way to the hostel, and I walked the last few blocks myself. It was cooooold. I got to the hostel and checked in, went to my room where there were seven other people sleeping, and immediately went to sleep. I had been in Australia two hours and was already hit with a big culture shock - but this time it was backward, from an intense Asian culture to something very much like the M.O. back home.
But I'd deal with all of that in the morning.
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