Nagoya: Busy-ness and Efficiency ＊名古屋：忙しさと効率

Here is what I have learnt in our first few days travelling with no guide in Japan. Restaurants are busy, trains are busy and people are busy. And, because everyone is so busy all the time, things are designed to run efficiently - and usually do. 

We have had mixed encounters with people, and are still kind of travelling. We spent our first night in Nagoya. Exhausted and excited we finally arrived at the airport after sixteen hours of flights. We managed to navigate to the correct train to get us to Nagoya Station, but then had a lot of trouble finding our hotel (the Daiichi Fuji Hotel). We wandered around the wrong side of the train station for about twenty minutes, until Elise suggested we ask someone for help. I went into a travel agent, and an employee very kindly googled the location of our hotel for me (even though it was about two minutes til closing time!). Even with her directions however, we managed to get lost again. Luckily, the concierge of a random hotel was VERY kind. Giving us a map and detailed directions, we finally managed to check in. 

That first night is a little blurry because of how tired I was. After dumping out bags and having a quick shower, we ventured outside to look for food. Well, there were about 10 lovely looking little food places on the nearby streets however none of them were very well equipped to seat a party of four! Many were 'tachigui' (立ち食い) - standing while eating - places or just really tiny. We eventually found a restaurant that would seat us, filled with smoking salarymen. I ordered us four okonomiyake, as it was the only kanji on the menu I recognised, and became very confused when the waitress started talking about the time (turns out she was apologising that the food would be a half hour wait [yeah, because that's not normal] because of how busy the place was). Service is just on another planet here. This was one of our first encounters with how startlingly efficient Japanese society is designed to be. 

After eating it was all we could do to stumble back to our rooms and collapse in bed. Check out for the next morning was 10am.