The E-Ticket Life

Laughing Place Press Presents: The E-Ticket Life Special Sample Chapter Preview The E-Ticket Life: Stories, Essays, and Lessons Learned from My Decidedly Disney Travels Kyle Burbank Foreword by Aaron Wallace Illustrations by Ashley O’ Neill 13 On the Oppisite Side of the World, A Villian Becomes My Friend eeing as I had mastered the art of traveling alone to Disneyland and spending time alone in Walt Disney World, I apparently thought the Snext logical step was a solo trip overseas. While most people might get their proverbial feet wet by first traveling to a foreign country a little closer to home, leave it to me to choose a trip to Tokyo, Japan. That’s right — I chose to go to a county where not only do I not speak more than three phrases of the language, but also one where the language isn’t written in Roman-based letters, leaving me not even a fighting chance of figuring it out in context. I should also mention that I’ve never been a big fan of flying. I’m not afraid of flying really, but I would frequently get headaches or feel nause- ated on board when I was younger. So purposely subjecting myself to an 11-hour flight was also a strange move. But I suppose they do say to face your fears, right? 2 The E-Ticket Life My desire to visit Tokyo had been growing since I was a senior in high school. One day during that year, my friend Mic and I drove up to the art- house theatre I worked at in Scottsdale, Arizona to see the Sophia Coppola film, Lost in Translation. The story follows a somewhat washed-up actor — played by Bill Murray — who travels to Tokyo to shoot a round of Japa- nese whiskey commercials. While there, he meets and becomes friends with another (much younger) American (Scarlett Johansson) who has been left alone in the hotel while her photographer husband is out working. Together, they learn to embrace the oddness of the city as well as appreciate its beauty. While it seemed to take the two a while to warm up to Tokyo, I fell in love with it from frame one. The bright neon, the buildings stacked on top of one another, the crowded streets — this place looked like Manhattan times ten — and I already loved New York. Strange or not, I was sold. It would be almost six years from that day at the theatre until I would get to visit Tokyo for myself. The idea went from “pipe dream” to “New Year’s Resolution” in a matter of days, as my roommates and I first brought up our mutual infatuation with the prospects of Japan. My roommate at the time, Cassandra, stated what should have been the obvious: “You just want to go there because of Disneyland.” Ironically for me being such a big Disney fan, I already had my heart set on traveling there before I even remembered that there was also a Disney resort in Tokyo. Of course, once I did remember this detail, the deal was sealed. The next step was to grab my laptop and see just how much a dream like this would cost to fulfill. Answer: not as much as one might think. As weeks passed, I was getting more and more serious about booking the trip. I was still working full time at a movie theatre, so I decided that the best time for me to travel would be in April, right before the big summer movie rush. Al- most serendipitously, this is cherry blossom season in Japan and, as I would learn, is one of the most beautiful times to visit. Eventually, my roommates decided they weren’t in a good financial place to take that large of a trip and so I searched for another partner in crime to accompany me. When this failed, I convinced myself that I could do this on my own. I booked the trip and immediately began researching everything I wanted to do and see while there. I didn’t actually believe I was going to Japan (especially for the price I paid) until the wheels touched down at Narita Airport. From the runway I could see the Japanese writing and people driving on the left side of the road, but I still wasn’t convinced. I then purchased a bus ticket into Tokyo (which is about an hour away from the airport), but it still felt more like Sample Chapter 3 Epcot to me than the real thing. Upon arriving at Tokyo City Air Terminal (which connects to the Tokyo subway system), I forgot all of the research I had done and quickly found myself in over my head. I purchased my train ticket and stuck it in the turn- stile in order to pass. However, as I walked down the stairs a few feet later, a man tapped me on the shoulder and handed me my ticket as I would need it to exit the station at my destination. Oops. The directions for my hotel had informed me to take “Exit 1” at Hanzo- mon Station in order to get to their property. As it turned out, the name of the train line I would take to get there was the Hanzomon Line. Unlike in New York, the stations in Tokyo are named with a letter and number, corre- sponding to their stop along that line. For example, the Hanzomon line was “Z” and the stations were “1” through “10”. Jumbling the words in my head, I then began to second-guess “Exit 1” and thought, perhaps, they meant “station 1” instead. This could not be more wrong. I exited the train at “Z1” — Shibuya Station. I walked up the stairs with my giant suitcase, packed with two weeks worth of clothes, and into what is Tokyo’s equivalent of Times Square. It was immediately apparent that I had made a mistake. Even though I was rather certain I was in the wrong area, that didn’t stop me from casually looking for the hotel just to be sure. Instead, I found a Tower Records — an old favorite store of mine that had gone out of busi- ness in the states years prior. I carried my ridiculous bag in and, for a few minutes, was able to forget the stress of not being able to find my hotel and just enjoy the city instead. I left the Tower empty-handed (save, of course, that embarrassingly large suitcase of mine) and decided it would be wise to find the train station. This proved easier said than done as I kept making right turns around the block and thinking I would soon see a big sign directing me to this gigantic subway station I had just come from. Eventually, I found an entrance (I don’t quite remember how) and paid for another train ticket — this time choosing the “all day pass” option just in case I made any more moronic mistakes. After getting back on the train, I waited for four stops and exited at “Z5,” or Hanzomon Station. There, clearly printed on the sign, were the words “Exit 1-3” and “Exit 4-5,” accompanied by arrows in different directions. I cursed myself for how difficult I had made something that was so simple. Let me put your worries to rest here and tell you that I did find my hotel that night. Following that initial misadventure, the rest of the trip went flaw- lessly. I mastered the train system, found more Tower Records stores, and 4 The E-Ticket Life even learned how to walk to Shibuya (which became my favorite part of the city) and find my way around there. As I’d walk, I couldn’t help but wonder if I, like Bill Murray’s character, would meet anyone else like me and we might share in our adventures together. It was also starting to set in that I hadn’t really talked to anyone in over a week. My hotel had internet, so I was able to Skype home a couple of times, but the conversations I had with the people of Tokyo were short and not fully understood by either party. In fact, the only words I could muster up the confidence to say to anyone in Japanese were “arigato gozaimasu” (“thank you”), as I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. Before going on my trip, my father told me that going to a place where you don’t understand the language is exciting because you have to pay attention to every detail in order to find your way back and survive. While this is certainly true to some degree, eventually I began to feel like a ghost around town. Wherever I was, there’d be signs and announcements made to get my attention, but I would tune them out since I didn’t know what they were saying. Every transaction I had with a fast-food or retail employee would just be me smiling and waiting for it to be over while they rambled on. In a city of 13 million, I was on my own. After a week in Tokyo, it was time for me to venture out to the Tokyo Disneyland Resort. This required two trains, including a transfer from the subway system I had been using to a JR line train. While I had gained confidence over the past week, there was some worry about screwing this trip up as badly as I had on that first night.

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