Dear Internet

The Internet cafe was quite different to any of the usual Internet cafes scattered around Europe or North America. Internet cafes in Japan can also be used as a very cheap means of accommodation. A common practice among the youth (over 20 which is the legal age of drinking here) of Japan, is to go out partying and crash out at your nearest Internet cafe. You are able to hire a private booth with a reclining chair, computer and sometimes a TV. It's like falling asleep in a mini living room, which after a night of drinking, let's be honest, isn't so bad-I'm sure most people have crashed in much worse places, including myself! It's much cheaper than a hotel, but we were not in need of accommodation that night, just our precious Internet. Even a short period, for me, without Internet I can imagine be likened to coming off hard drugs. I'm anxious without access to it, paranoid about when I will get to see it again and have obsessive thoughts about what's happening on my Facebook update feed! The Internet, Keisha, is my drug!

The Internet is my drug!

We managed to be able to charades our way through the conversation, to put our point across about the Internet withdrawals we were going through and our desperation for it. The man behind the counter handed us a membership form which we had to pay about $8.00 bucks to get in the door then we stared shocked at the prices before us. Half an hour was about $15.00! AHH they were taking advantage of the starved for Internet feeble folk like us! We needed our fix, bit our tongues and handed our cash over.

The adrenaline started pumping, now I was going to have my fix! Half an hour was garbage and I needed to zip through all my social network accounts, emails and attempt to call my boyfriend on skype. There was a little timer at the bottom of the screen counting down our fate. I felt a trickle of sweat drip down my neck, and it wasn't due to the heat, it was crunch time and the pressure was on!

The Japanese keyboards were all jumbled around. We all sat there side-by-side nervous about the race we were about to start. Robin was panicking, almost shouting at us, "Where is the 'Return' key?!" "The comma is where the question mark used to be", I pipped in grouchily. There were only a few differences between English and Japanese keyboards and luckily there were English letters on this one. But those differences made us super speedy computer techies, look like senior citizens using a computer for the first time, extending one finger at a time to push down one key, at tortoise-like pace!

The Japanese keyboard.

 The tensions ran high, as we hustled through writing back to friends and family wondering how Japan was. My computer didn't have skype on it, I realized quite early on, after plowing through writing several emails (almost all of them to my boyfriend, as I justified to myself that if I compiled several emails that might be able to last him until I found Internet or won the lottery, to be able to use it again). "What kind of Internet cafe didn't have skype on it?!" I opened browser, which was all in Japanese, and tried to download skype onto the computer and as the clock ticked closer, an annoying Japanese phrase with an exclamation mark came up. ARGH, some sort of error message I was guessing! All of us were grumbling and barely speaking a word to each other, out of the concentration we needed to use these foreign computers and accomplish everything we needed to do in time. 5....4....3....2....1 Merran and I logged out of my email accounts just then. A painful scream erupted from beside me. I looked and Robin was midway through an email when her computer cut her off. The look of horror on her face was legit, "WTF, isn't there a way to pay for extra time?" This would make sense to have in place and could further justify the copious amounts they could charge us and we would pay, being Internet junkies. "I suppose not here," which was a feeling I was starting to get used-not expecting anything to be the same as it would back home.