Back in 2003, I visited Japan for the first time. I was there with Rikke, and in less than a week we managed to party hard in Tokyo, sleep through an earthquake, and fly up to Sapporo to meet my friend Mari before heading back to Denmark. It was my first, rather hectic, introduction to Japan, and it was love at first sight.
We hadn’t done any research before we went, so don’t ask me how we managed to get from the airport into the city. We didn’t have a hotel reservation either, so after arriving at Tokyo Station, we just walked around to the hotels in the area and tried to book a room.
None of them would let us stay in a double room, though, because apparently it would be highly inappropriate for two girls to sleep in the same bed! Hotels around Tokyo Station were expensive, and we were on a tight budget, so we really didn’t want to pay for two separate rooms. Finally, after what felt like hours, we found somewhere to stay. I don’t remember the name of the hotel, but the room was tiny and had a bunk bed.
I also have a small confession to make. Please don’t tell customs in Amsterdam. We were shopping in this huge Japanese supermarket when I spotted a shelf with Japanese whisky in 3-liter bottles, and I couldn’t resist bringing such a funny liquid souvenir back home.
The problem is that I’m not a very good smuggler, so when I went through customs in Amsterdam, I was oozing guilt. An officer told me to step aside and asked me to open my suitcase. I did, and there it was, the big bad bottle staring right back at him.
He picked it up, looked at it more closely, and asked me what in the world it was.
“Some kind of Japanese wine,” I muttered, while mentally preparing myself for a hefty fine, jail, or whatever Amsterdam might do to offenders like me.
So you can imagine my surprise when the officer just shrugged, put the plastic bottle back in my suitcase, closed it, and waved me through customs.
To this day, I don’t know whether it was because he couldn’t read the Japanese characters or whether he simply didn’t care, but the whisky was a big hit at a student party in Sweden the following weekend.
