Arriving in Japan

JAL jet from Hong Kong to Kagoshima. Virtually empty - only a few Japanese businessmen and us. Lots of attention from the hostesses. This should have been a warning. We were headed where unprepared foreigners did not go, especially late on a Saturday afternoon.
The airport is set deep in the countryside, equidistant from three major cities. Services are geared to the main users - Japanese travelling locally - hence no money changing facilities.
We located an Information and Tourist Officer. Through communication by gestures and a few mispronounced words of Japanese, we booked two nights accommodation at the Tokyo Inn in Kagoshima. The money then requested was well in excess of the prices quoted in our little guidebook to cheap Japanese accommodation, and beyond the $US50 a harrassed airlines clerk was willing to exchange for us.
Frustration (on the part of airline staff) and panic (us) resulted in louder attempts to communicate. This aroused the suspicions of a uniformed policeman, who demanded passports. He studied my papers for what seemed an eternity, repeatedly flicking pages back and forth. He then persisted in questioning me in Japanese and what I guessed he thought to be English with increasing annoyance at my failure to answer. I needed to placate him so I settled on anwering with a random 'yes' or 'no' whenever he appeared to pause for a reply. Whatever I agreed to or denied, he was satisfied and wandered off apparantly pleased with a successful interrogation.
After a few more hours of overcoming miscommunication through repeatedly saying the same things in languages that were incomprehensible to the other, we were led onto a bus to Kagoshima armed with maps on where to exchange money in that city and the whereabouts of our hotel.
The bus was a capitalist's delight. Seats collapsed into the passageway to cram in as many passangers as possible and adverstising slides flashed across a large screen that hid any view of the countryside. Poor Lib did not seem to notice any of this, nor did she respond to my comments on the societal implications. She said she had to concentrate on controlling her coughs and sniffles, a legacy of our side-trip to China, which she imagined was greeted with dismay by our super composed fellow travellers.
Though more like a cabin in a submarine, our hotel room was extremely comfortable. With spirits restored, we set out in search of food.
Obtaining dinner was relatively simple as most eating establishments had plastic displays of their main dishes in the window. Ordering merely involved pointing at what to me seemed very similar to the pretend vomit I had used as a child to play tricks on gullible adults. Despite Lib's previous protestations of weariness at having to carry her bags from the bus stop to our hotel, she surprised me with her interest in these displays. (Her bags were the same ones she had spent so much time in selecting back home because of their supposed ease of carriage.) With difficulty I convinced her to stop window shopping and settle on one eating establishment.
A fitting end to our first day in Japan was a short selection of night music transmitted to our room through hidden speakers. This was followed by announcements about all the things we should not do, such as smoke in bed, and things we should do, such as turn off the television and note the nearest fire escape. These announcements were both in Japanese and English, which we thought particularly considerate as we appeared to be the only non-Japanese in the hotel. This was followed by a little more night music to send us off to dreamland.