On our second full day in Tokyo, I met my boss and her family in the hotel lobby at 9am to get started on seeing as much as possible. First, we did as all tourists must do, and went to view the Imperial Palace, conveniently located only a few blocks from Tokyo Station. Although I’ve now been there at least three times, the picture-taking this time seemed to turn out better, so here’s one of the palace and one with me, too.

We had intended to go see the part of the palace gardens that are open to the public, but it turns out that we had planned very poorly, because the only day of the week that they’re closed is Monday. As it turns out, Monday is also a bad day to go to the Meiji shrine, our next stop, because none of the cosplayers are out on Harajuku Bridge at all, having done their utmost all weekend. This quite disappointingly lessens the feeling of contrast that comes from passing people who seem to embody all the weird news the West ever hears about modern Tokyo and then walking under the shrine’s enormous torii gate that seems to make the entire city disappear.

The Meiji shrine is one of my favorite places in all of Tokyo, and I was looking forward to it as the only place I really cared about going that day, but our visit turned out to be quite short, and I missed my chance to finally see the iris garden there in bloom. It turned out that we were supposed to meet up with one of my boss’s friends from graduate school for lunch. He brings a group of students from the college where he teaches for a short course in on-site Japanese history every summer, and he had just finished up. He took us to a conveyor sushi restaurant nearby, which was novel for my boss’s family, although probably not a huge hit with the vegetarian daughter. (There were quite a few vegetarian things to eat, anyway.)

He then led us around on a mini-tour. First we went through Harajuku, which, as with the bridge, was pretty tame on a Monday afternoon and largely full of small shops full of trendy clothes that none of us were very interested in. He was somewhat surprised at the disinterest, since his students are always quite enthusiastic (and apparently Gwen Stefani fans.) So then we went to the Tokyo Metro Government Building, so we could ride the elevator to the top and see the panorama of Tokyo. There was a very cute bit of artwork outside (see picture), and it was interesting to me to realize that I was now in the building that I had seen so clearly from my hotel room during JET orientation, way back in 2002.

From there, my boss’s friend decided we should go to Ueno Park, where we saw, as I recall, a small shrine dedicated to all the Tokugawa shoguns; a statue of Saigo Takamori, an important historical figure who helped bring the emperor back to central power, but later was convicted as a traitor, and is now a hero again; a monument to the invention of eyeglasses beside the big pond; and the entrances to the zoo and all the various museums that were closed because it was Monday. One point of interest, though, is that the manhole covers in the park are all patterned in cherry blossoms, presumably because it is one of the most popular hanami spots during spring. They’re probably the fanciest manhole covers I’ve ever seen.

After saying farewell to my boss’s friend, we went back to the hotel, where I had just enough time to run in, change out of the shoes I had been walking around in since 9am, and then run back to the train to go meet Joe and Hisako, two friends from Grinnell who now live in Tokyo. Hisako met me at the train station they had said was the most convenient for them (not on the Yamanote line, for once!) and we went to a small okonomiyaki restaurant in the basement of a nearby building, decorated eclectically with plants, posters, and antique sewing machines. (No explanation.) We sat and talked until Joe arrived on his bike, and then we ordered food and sat and talked. For three hours. Aaaaahhhhh… After having spent most of two days experiencing Tokyo primarily as a tourist, it was nice to feel like I was getting to experience it like a person who lived there again, at least for a little while. It really highlighted how different the two ways of experiencing the city (and Japan in general) can be. The tourist version gets very old after a while.

But eventually we did have to say good-bye, Joe and Hisako so they could go to work in the morning and me so I could get up early for the next part of the adventure: China. I was very sad to leave. I feel like I just got a teaser of my “real” Japan. Joe and Hisako were clearly excellent hosts.

I was tagged for a meme by Jennie. I promise I will return to the trip after this.

Rules:
1. Link the person(s) who tagged you
2. Mention the rules on your blog
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
4. Tag 6 fellow bloggers by linking them
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged.

(Yes, I’m ignoring rules 4 and 5, as always, because it is inevitable that by the time I get tagged for a meme, the person who tagged me has already also tagged anyone else I would be able to tag myself.)

My 6 Unspectacular Quirks

1. Even though I lived without a TV for several years and felt vaguely superior about it, I really do like TV shows. The main thing that not having access to regular TV did for me was make me actually have standards for the shows I watch, so now I’m not nearly as addicted as I used to be. If there is a flickering picture tube on in the room, though, I pretty much have to look at it.
2. I am also easily addicted to series books. Even if the writing isn’t stellar, or I don’t like the particular plot of this book, if it’s in a series with a character (even a side character) that I remotely like, I’ll keep reading. I’m more addicted to reading than I am to TV.
3. I could almost entirely exist on bread and peanut butter.
4. I am accumulating new kinds of tea far faster than I can consume it, even though I now drink about 3 mugs a day at work. (Of course, this is largely because I reuse the same tea leaves/bag all day.)
5. I am frugal largely because I am too lazy and vaguely agoraphobic (in the more original sense of disliking crowds, not the out of doors) to go out and spend money unless there is a pressing need. This has encouraged me to start bringing my lunch to work with me. Peanut butter, of course.
6. I continue to drive my parents’ minivan, loaned to me after my return from my brief stint in Taiwan 3 years ago, because my personal financial habits still tell me that I can only spend money if I have it, and I spent all the car money I had previously saved for the down payment on the house. I will undoubtedly continue to wait until I have enough money saved again, because debt terrifies me.

This was actually harder than it seemed like it should be, because really, how boring does a quirk have to be before it’s “unspectacular”? And if it’s too boring, is it really a quirk?

As a brief break from my trip log, I would like to report (and complain about) an ad I saw on the train in Tokyo. First, some background for those of you who haven’t been spending any time on the Yamanote line recently: Above the doors in all the train cars, there are two small TV screens. One displays the name of the current and/or upcoming station, which changes every few seconds in a series, first with the name of the station in Romaji (roman characters), then in hiragana (syllabary characters), then in kanji (Chinese characters), and then displays a mini-map of the line, showing how many minutes it is to each subsequent stop. This screen is awesome. I know a number of ex-pats who say it has helped their kana and kanji recognition abilities immensely.

The other screen next to it shows a series of ads in a continuous loop. Therefore, during my several days in Tokyo, I saw the same ads multiple times. One in particular caught my attention, because it was for an English language school for adults. It featured two women sitting side by side at a table, one Japanese and one Caucasian. The Japanese woman was speaking (with word bubbles displayed by her head for extra clarity), and the Caucasian woman, ostensibly her tutor, was there to look encouraging. Across the bottom of the screen were boxes displaying the words “Who, What, When, Where, Why” and as the Japanese woman spoke the each part of her sentence, the related question word would light up.

I was pretty happy with this at first. Yes! Encourage students to build sentences with multiple clauses! Encourage explanations of why! Until they got to the end of the sentence, that is:

I like skiing…
with my friends…
in Nagano…
10 times a year… (note: Seriously?)
because… (drumroll)
I really like it!
[tutor claps hands enthusiastically]

“Because I really like it”? Argh! This is even worse than the explanation I banned in one of my classes when I was teaching in Sendai, due to overuse: “Because it is (very) interesting.” You like something because you really like something? Wow. I never would have guessed.

Mostly, I felt sorry for the poor woman acting as the tutor, who had to be completely overenthusiastic about that failure of a sentence.

Our first full day in Tokyo wasn’t very action-packed for me, since I was waiting at the hotel for Kamiyama-sensei and Tomo to come, but that was a nice change after feeling like I needed to be doing something ever since we had landed at the airport. When I woke up that morning, I decided to go to the Starbucks I had noticed around the corner at the apparent entrance to the Sunshine City mega-mall. The mall wasn’t open yet, but the Starbucks was in a little semi-external annex, so I sat at the bar in the window to eat my breakfast. After a while of staring out the window idly at the crowd gathered on the terrace there, it occurred to me that 1) it was sort of strange that there were so many people on the terrace when the mall didn’t seem to really be open, 2) I was perhaps the only female person sitting on either side of that window, and 3) all the predominantly young men out there appeared to be reading and quite actively discussing manga. My best guess is that new issues came out on Sunday morning. Either that or there was some sort of special event that day, but there didn’t seem to be any signs up or anything.

I wandered back to the hotel once I’d finished eating. In my room, where I spent the remainder of the morning, since it was the only phone number I could be called at, (I hadn’t realized what a pain being in Japan without a cell phone would be,) I caught up on some of my random Japanese TV watching. I watched some US sports, golf and baseball as I recall, amusingly being broadcast live at a much different time of day than I was used to; a cooking competition a la the Food Network, which featured a group of candy makers who competing in challenges to make extremely realistic non-candy foods out of candy (pizza, eel donburi, a hamburger, etc.) that had to look realistic even on the inside once the judges started to eat them; an apparently live broadcast of the Emperor and Empress planting trees in a ceremony somewhere; a show with two go masters playing each other with commentators giving in-depth analysis of their every move and what else they might have possibly chosen to do.

At about mid-day, Kamiyama-sensei and Tomo arrived. They elected for us to eat in one of the hotel’s restaurants because had gotten a lot hotter since I had gone outside that morning for coffee. That was fine with me, since we ended up talking for 3 hours anyway and it wouldn’t have mattered where we were. We did, of course, have soba, and it was okay, but I think we all agreed that it wasn’t nearly as good as the restaurant where we had planned to go if I had been able to come to Sendai. (sniff, sniff)

Probably the longest continuous parts of our conversation was deciding what kanji to put on the hanko stamp my karate sensei had requested I bring back for him. I transliterated his last name for them as “ma-mu-do,” and they began a long, animated conversation with Tomo drawing a lot of possible characters on a paper, and Kamiyama-sensei trying to translate more or less what they meant, or at least what word they came from, for me, and then some consultation of the kanji dictionaries in their spiffy Japanese cell phones. The whole thing reminded me of my very first day in Sendai, when my newly-met coworkers sat with the principal in his office and decided what my hanko should be. The characters we decided on this time were:

• “ma” as used in “polish”
• “mu” as used in “bushido” (with a different pronunciation, obviously)
• “do” as used in “try your best”

We also, of course, had to exchange gifts. I had brought Kamiyama-sensei his requested item of “something Duke” in the form of a coffee mug. Kamiyama-sensei and Tomo overwhelmed me with all the stuff they had brought from Sendai for me, all of which was incredibly thoughtful and kind: two new Kitty-chan netsuke charms for the new professional baseball team now based in Sendai, the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, and another one of Kitty-chan relaxing in a hot spring tub from a recent trip they took to an onsen; a pen case made out of beautiful, thick, pressed handmade paper in pastel colors that feels almost like leather; and some traditional tea cakes from a part of Miyagi they had recently traveled to that are like little pancake sandwiches with sweet bean paste in the middle (like anko, except the beans are pale green instead of red.) My poor mug didn’t seem like enough by a long shot.

At about 4pm, though, we had to say good-bye so they wouldn’t miss their shinkansen back to Sendai. We stopped to take a picture in the lobby.

Tomo had tears in her eyes as she said good-bye, which was so sweet, since this was the first time we had been able to meet in person. I was very sad to see them go. Next time, I will have to go see them in Sendai.

I still had a bit of time before my boss and her family were due to return to the hotel to see if I could go to dinner, so I ventured back into Sunshine City to see if I could find a CD store to buy Mark the CD he had requested, since it was unavailable in the US. I ended up wandering all through the main mall area to no avail, and then eventually found my way back up and out to the street (I had been underground for a while), which was also lined with unending shopping opportunities, where I eventually found an HMV. Success! And enough shopping for me. I went back to the hotel.

It turned out to be good that I had explored the shopping street a bit, though, because when my boss came back with news of where we were supposed to meet her friend for dinner, I knew right where the meeting spot was and could lead our whole group there. The friend we were meeting is a Japanese woman who used to work in our department, but moved back to Japan to be able to do her real job of international finance. Her husband, though, is still a history professor in the US, and he and their kids go to Japan every summer. (I think the kids used to spend a year in the US and a year in Japan, back and forth, but the school years are off-set, so it’s getting to be too difficult now.) Anyway, we all found each other, and both families and I trailed along to the restaurant where we had reservations. There was a great overabundance of food, mainly of the on-sticks variety, and it was all good. It seemed like we kept eating and eating, and there was still a lot left over. I suspect we were all very full by the time we made our way back to the hotel.

The second day in Kyoto was probably my favorite day in Japan. My boss said she felt confident enough about figuring out how to get around Kyoto now, and her husband was back with them, having discharged his talk duties the day before, so I was free to wander around by myself for the day. This was great, because it meant that I got to go see something I hadn’t actually seen the last time I was there, namely Fushimi Inari Shrine.

Fushimi Inari is outside the main part of Kyoto, so first I caught a bus to Kyoto Station, and then I took a local train to Inari Station, which is only about two stops outside the main city. (Being on the local train made me feel like I was really in Japan again, since that used to be one of my main forms of transportation.) The entrance to the shrine is directly across the street from the station, so I made a quick stop in the convenience store for a drink to carry with me, and then set off.

The main shrine isn’t that different from many others, except that it is an Inari shrine, so there are many statues of foxes, since they are supposed to be the messengers and symbols of Inari, god of rice and commerce, amongst other things. The real attraction to me, though, was the system of pathways covering the mountainside behind the shrine, which are almost entirely covered in long series of torii gates. I took a lot of pictures. (Below are two of my favorites.) I spent the whole morning there and left feeling like I had gotten a good workout on all the many, many stairs, most of which seem to go up. I don’t think the middle school kids doing an assignment there were too fond of all the stairs.

I ate lunch at a cafe on one of the terraces in Kyoto Station when I got back, largely because I didn’t really feel like wandering around in the surrounding streets to find somewhere else to eat since I was already pretty hungry. The food was definitely overpriced, but it did buy me a place to sit and read for a little while, and they brought me a little sand timer with my teapot to tell me how long to let it steep, which was cute.

Then I decided to go visit Kinkakuji, since the last time I was in Kyoto it was being refurbished (regilded? reroofed?) and was completely shrouded top to bottom, leaving not much to see. I think maybe we didn’t even go in to the main temple complex because I had seen pictures of how covered it was. This time, though, it seems like I traded Ginkakuji for Kinkakuji, because it was a lovely clear day. I can’t say that visiting the temple was a particularly restful experience, though, as it is one of the most famous sites in Japan, and was therefore thronged with both regular tourists and middle school groups on their big class trip. Once I entered the grounds, I got shunted into the picture taking area first, where I admittedly did take some very nice pictures, and then got swallowed up by the inexorably moving crowd on the path. I think I was in and out of the whole place in about 10 minutes.

After that, since I had nothing else planned, I followed the walking route to the next main temple that is considered a must-see for tourists, Ryoanji. I had been there before, and I probably took some of the same pictures again, but I figured it might be interesting to go back in summer instead of winter, as I did at Ginkakuji. Of course, Ryoanji is famous for its rock garden, the most famous one in Japan, and it turns out rock gardens don’t change much, season to season. It was far more peaceful than Kinkakuji, though. My boss reported later that this was the temple her family liked best, kids included.

After contemplating the rock garden for a while, I got up again and wandered through their other gardens, which, having blooms, were much more interesting than they would have been in winter. There were only a few middle schoolers here, and I found some nice irises.

I then continued down the temple walking route to the last one on the row, Ninnaji, but I was running out of yen at that point and couldn’t pay both the entrance fee and bus fare for the return to the ryokan. I elected to take the bus. When it got me back to the Gion stop, I still had some time to kill before meeting up with my boss and her family, so I went to the 7-Eleven to get more cash (their ATMs were the only ones to reliably work with my US card), and then went back to nostalgically have a coffee at the same Starbucks my dad and I had found last time were in Kyoto. This was an accomplishment at the time because Kyoto is possibly the least beStarbucked city in Japan, though I do think I spotted a few more from the bus window this time. Then I took the route back to the ryokan that went through Maruyama Park. I ended up running into my boss there anyway, as I paused to watch two guys practicing a fairly impressive juggling act, and then turned to find a heron perched in the middle of the pond behind me.

We all then walked back to the ryokan to pick up our suitcases, caught cabs back to Kyoto Station, and then took a shinkansen to Tokyo. We missed seeing Mt. Fuji again, because it was already dark by the time we passed that stretch of the trip. Upon arrival in Tokyo, we transferred to the local Yamanote line (the one that makes a circle around most of the main stops of the center city) and rode it to Ikebukuro, where our hotel was.

Upon check-in, I discovered I had a message from Kamiyama-sensei, who I was supposed to visit in Sendai the next day. When I called him, he said that there had been a major earthquake the day before near the border of Miyagi-ken and Iwate-ken. It hadn’t affected Sendai directly very much, but it had caused some damage to roads and the shinkansen tracks. Being Japan, of course, they had gotten the train running again the next day, but Kamiyama-sensei was worried there might be an aftershock that could disrupt service again, so he thought it would be safer for him and his wife to come meet me in Tokyo instead. With those plans confirmed for the next day, I went to bed.

Where was I? Oh, yes, our emergency hotel in Tokyo. As I mentioned, though, one of the best things about this hotel was its proximity to Tokyo Station, so the next morning it was no problem to get up bright and early, check out, and walk over to the station to catch one of the first shinkansens out to Kyoto. Unfortunately, we ended up in a smoking car, which rather detracted from the usually very pleasant shinkansen experience, because it is Japan, and the businessmen will certainly smoke in the smoking car, without question. It turns out that I can’t actually hold my breath for two hours, alas. We also missed seeing Mt. Fuji.

However, we did finally get to Kyoto! We took two cabs to our ryokan, and it was very nice. I was really looking forward to staying there, because I’d only gotten to stay in ryokans twice while I was living in Japan, one not-so-nice one in Tokyo when we were trying to save money, and one super-nice one when I went with the first-year teachers on their end-of-year retreat. Getting to sleep in a tatami room on a futon again felt almost like home. Both of my boss’s daughters thought it was very cool, and I think the younger one decided she wanted to live in Japanese house with sliding shoji doors forever. My room looked down on the courtyard area inside the front gate, which was pretty and charming during the day, and even better at night, when all the lanterns were glowing by the path.

The women from the front desk served us tea in the sitting room attached to my boss’s family’s room, and then my boss’s husband had to go give a guest lecture at a nearby university where he knew a colleague. The rest of us ventured out to explore the neighborhood. Our ryokan turned out to be in the Gion district, and it appeared that the building at the end of the street was a favored place for women dressed like geisha/maiko to pose for pictures. I never did figure out what the building actually was, or if it was just picturesque. I finally got to have real soba again when we stopped for lunch at a small nearby restaurant, where my boss’s daughters also discovered the wonder of Japanese vending machines and all the many flavors of Fanta we don’t have in the US.

Then it was back to the ryokan for a brief rest, after which we went out for our first real destination: Ginkakuji (Temple of the Silver Pavilion). I think this was my favorite temple of all the ones I visited with my family when they came to visit me for Christmas when I lived in Japan, because the gardens are so peaceful, and the temple building itself is so unassuming, especially compared to its twin, Kinkakuji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion). Ginkakuji never actually ended up getting silvered, so it seems much more natural, and, at least to me, suited to its environment. Unfortunately, I don’t think the rest of the group got to feel much of that effect, because the temple itself was being reroofed, and we went through the gardens kind of quickly, because it was hot and the kids were tired. Not that this stopped me from taking pictures anyway, of course.

We decided to drop the kids off at the ryokan before doing anything else, but by the time we caught the right bus back, I realized that all the other places we were interested in would be closing for the day. Instead, my boss and I went to the local conbini (and you know how much I love Japanese convenience stores; they topped my list of things I would miss most) to get stuff for a light dinner, since our appetites were still screwed up from jet lag. In my opinion, this made for an excellent meal. I enjoyed it back in my room, where I got to explore the wonders of Japanese TV again. That evening’s entertainment choice was an episode of a mystery show that appears to star Japan’s version of Columbo. Google reveals that the show is called Furuhata Ninzaburo. That particular episode was particularly interesting to me because the guest star and eventually convicted murderer was none other than Ichiro Suzuki. Playing himself, no less, which was kind of strange, given that he was playing himself as a rather cold-blooded murderer. But apparently he is a big fan of the show, so I assume he had fun with it.

At the end of the episode, I went to sleep on my very comfortable futon, with the window open, already planning out my next day.

Sorry for the four day interruption in my trip narrative, especially after leaving you with the teaser of just the first day, but it was for a good cause. I had to go to our family beach cottage at Nags Head for the weekend, because it was Fourth of July, and I am supposed to be at the beach then. Pretty much every summer of my whole childhood, our family went to the beach for the week of July 4th, and I haven’t been able to go in years. I thought it might be an interesting exercise to see if I could remember all the places I’ve spent the 4th in the past several years.

• 2001: Arica, Chile, beginning my trip to Peru at the end of my semester abroad
• 2002: Beloit, WI, summer session for intensive Japanese
• 2003: Sendai, Japan, teaching high school English for the JET program
• 2004: Hangzhou, China, teaching English for a pilot program that didn’t really take off
• 2005: Taipei, Taiwan, having a horrible time teaching English illegally for two weeks before I got fed up
• 2006: Raleigh, NC, from behind the art museum
• 2007: Umm, Raleigh? I recall having to work a lot during July, and I can’t remember doing much of anything on the 4th. Maybe I didn’t do anything at all, since it was a Wednesday.

This year, though, aside from being too short a visit, was great. Perhaps I should look at it as easing back into proper beach appreciation. Anyway, Mark and I drove down to the cottage Thursday after work. My parents were already there, having arrived the previous weekend, lucky people. We had something of a small adventure getting there, since the cottage’s driveway is kind of hidden, especially in the dark, and it turns out that some new pipes or something had been put into the shoulder of the highway just a few yards farther along and then marked with reflective cones spaced exactly a driveway’s width apart.

So we turned confidently off the highway in the dark, only to have the headlights show us an unbroken stretch of trees rather than the driveway. And Mark’s tires were stuck in the sand so we couldn’t get back on the highway. It turned out that the police were doing their patrol past there at just that moment, though, so about a minute after we got stuck, they showed up. They didn’t really believe us when we said there was a driveway we had been aiming for instead, but I walked back to it and pointed it out, and they helped Mark get out of the sand, so it turned out okay.

Anyway, the next day was the 4th, and my dad had decided that this year, we needed to go over to Manteo again to see the fireworks on the waterfront the way we used to every year. In recent years, the trend has been to walk over to Jockey’s Ridge State Park and sit on top of the sand dune to watch the fireworks across the sound, but as my dad pointed out, you can’t hear all the booms that way. Mark hadn’t been to see Fort Raleigh or any of the Lost Colony exhibits yet, either, so we made a day of it by going there first, allowing Mark to show off his knowledge of military history by explaining why the fort’s earthworks have such a spiky layout. Some other tourists there started listening in, too, after they got over their disappointment at how small the fort itself was. (It’s from 1587, and all the people disappeared! It’s hardly going to be in perfect working condition. Come on.)

Then we drove back into Manteo proper, parked on the street near the waterfront, and wandered around. We looked at the replica of one of Sir Walter Raleigh’s ships, the Elizabeth II, admired the boats in the marina, and had some dinner. Then we went across the bridge to the new Festival Park and settled down on a beach blanket on the grass to listen to the NC School of the Arts orchestra perform until it was time for fireworks! It turns out that the Festival Park is an even better spot for watching the fireworks than the area on the other side of the waterfront where we used to always sit. This time it felt like we were almost right underneath them. It was excellent.

We spent the remainder of the weekend doing nothing much, with two excursions over to the ocean, a trip to the movie theater to see The Incredible Hulk, and lots of time for reading, which is also a traditional beach activity for the majority of my family. My goal next year is to get to spend the whole week.

While I was on my trip to Asia, I took notes in the little notebook I carry with me everywhere about all the stuff I did so I wouldn’t forget, and it was while doing so on the very first day, er, night there that I realized that due to the time change and dateline, the first day was really the first two days. So here’s how Day 1/2 went:

Mark dropped me off at the airport that morning before he went to work, and I met up with my boss and her family (husband and two daughters) there. Our flight to DC took off fine, on time, no problem. Upon arrival in DC, we were informed that our flight to Tokyo was delayed. By the time our plane actually took off, the total time delayed was 4.5 hours. This was not ideal.

Our original plan, you see, was to organize our time in Japan this way: Fly into Tokyo mid-afternoon, catch the shinkansen to Kyoto, spend two nights there, shink back to Tokyo, spend 3 nights there, then fly from there to Beijing.

The way it actually worked: Fly into Tokyo arriving around 8pm, get to Tokyo Stn at almost 9:30pm with sense of doom and dread, having checked the shinkansen schedule on the Narita Express from the airport and thereby confirming that all shinkansens to Kyoto had departed for the night. Therefore, we have nowhere to stay.

Given that Japan is not the place to be for spur-of-the-moment travel plans and changes, and I was the only person in the group who spoke any Japanese at all, I really didn’t have any idea how we were going to deal with this. First, we got out my 4-years-out-of-date guide book, which said that there was a hotel right outside the Marunouchi side of the station. This was, of course, the other side of the station, and much of the inside of the station appears to be under renovation right now, so we made a somewhat confusing trek all the way over, kids tired and probably somewhat scared that we had nowhere to sleep, and also complaining about having to drag all the luggage.

We exit onto the sidewalk outside the indicated Marunouchi exit and do not see the hotel. There is a lot of construction stuff around, and it is entirely possible that the hotel is gone. We look confused. We decide to consult the officers at the police box right next to us. They speak very minimal English. I speak very minimal Japanese relevant to this situation. A miracle occurs in the form of a passing helpful Japanese man who happens to speak extremely fluent English. He and perhaps as many as five Japanese police officers confer for a while, and we eventually end up booked into a nearby, less expensive hotel.

That such a thing exists near Tokyo Stn is also something of a miracle. We never would have found it on our own. It was called the Hotel Haimaat (High Mart). I am fairly convinced that it is intended for drunken businessmen who miss their last train home. Two of the rooms had bunk beds for two people, and one room, mine was a single. These were possibly the world’s most efficient (read: small) hotel rooms. Well, almost. My boss asked if this was actually a capsule hotel, and I had to assure her that it certainly was not.
The two pictures below show the entirety of my room, minus the bathroom, because I am leaning against its door to take the pictures.

Tininess aside, it was definitely all I needed and more. The bathroom contained extra razors, toothbrushes, and toothpaste, not to mention a perfectly adequate shower/tub (in the Japanese sense) combination, sink, and toilet. I gratefully showered, changed into my pajamas, and slept.

It’s only a bit more than a month late, but I’m finally grabbing the time to recap my trip to MN for Ann & Erik’s wedding, which was wonderful. Mark and I got to the Twin Cities on Thursday, took the shuttle from the airport to the hotel, and then proceeded to be lazy and not really do anything until we went downstairs and had dinner in their restaurant. I did manage to get in touch with another, non-wedding-related friend from Grinnell in the area, so we ventured out after dinner on the hotel’s hourly shuttle to the Mall of America, since it was a place both parties could get to without a car. It was very nice to be able to finally meet E. in person, since she’s mostly been an online friend until this point, although it turns out that Mark had met her before. Anyway, we had fun wandering around there, being horrified by the sheer number of stores selling useless things, admiring the Lego store large-scale models, and having mediocre food.

The next day, Mark and I managed to get in touch with all the various other people in our group who were going to be sharing the rental costs of a minivan. We didn’t get a hugely early start, because Matt & Heather had ridiculous flight delays the night before as they tried to simply get from Michigan to Minnesota, so they were very tired. Eventually, though, we (me & Mark, Matt & Heather, and also our friend Kris) took the hotel shuttle back to the airport, wended our way through a series of very confusing directional signs, a couple of escalators, and a tram, and finally managed to pick up a very swanky minivan with all the electronic thingies a person could possibly want. (We had much fun with the automatic door opener on the key chain all weekend.) On the way back to the hotel, we stopped for lunch, and also to get present wrapping supplies.

Then it was truly back to the hotel to drop off Matt and Mark to go entertain themselves, get together presents for Ann, find our other friend Pam, who had just gotten in from Oregon, and then get all of us girls back in the van to go meet Ann for pre-wedding tea. Tea was in the style of British high tea, in that it involved lots of delicious food in deceptive portions, but without us being particularly dressed up. Heather, Pam, Kris, and I had each ordered Ann part of a full tea set, including a tea pot, cream and sugar bowls, and 4 cup-and-saucer sets, in white with a pretty pattern of green leaves. We ate so much, I thought I would explode.

There was more food to be had pretty much right away, though, because immediately following our tea was the pre-wedding picnic at a park by the river. (When we got there, I realized it was the one that Ann had taken me to when I had a long layover in MN during one of my flights back to the US from Japan. I have many fond memories of that park now.) Pam went directly there with Ann, while Heather, Kris, and I returned to the hotel to fetch Mark & Matt. When we got to the park, it was discovered that Mark and Erik were wearing shirts with eerily similar messages. (Erik’s shirt: Red Cross, “Free Cookies!”; Mark’s shirt: “Come to the dark side, we have cookies. -V[ader]“) You may draw your own conclusions.

Oddly similar

There we socialized for several hours with even more Grinnell people (Pam’s husband, Todd; our friend Anna and her boy, the other Matt), some of Erik’s crew from high school, and of course all of the bride and groom’s relatives. All the parents were handily identified by their nicely embroidered cook’s aprons, each indicating their role (MOG, FOG, MOB, FOB). There was, as mentioned, lots of food, and of course, in an event involving Erik, lots of pie. Mmmm, pie.

The next day was the wedding, and we left a good deal earlier than we needed to in an effort not to be late, since it was the same weekend as Macalester’s graduation, and said college is within walking distance of the Meeting House. That turned out not to be a huge problem, so we had, um, some time to stand around in the Meeting House foyer, gradually accumulating more and more Grinnellians in an awkward clump by the door. Eventually, the number of people in the foyer reached critical mass, and we went in to the main room to find seats.

I’d never been to a Quaker wedding ceremony before, and it was truly lovely. First, a meeting member explained what would happen for all the non-Quakers in attendance. There was about half an hour of silence at the beginning, and then Ann & Erik rose together to say their vows. In many ways, this seemed to make the whole thing much more of an immediate experience, with none of the distance that seems to get brought into the process by an officiant asking the bride and groom to “repeat after me.” They were talking directly to each other, and once they finished exchanging rings, they kissed and that’s it, they were married. They then signed the marriage contract and Ann’s uncle read it aloud. We then returned to silence, with the invitation for those who felt moved to share a memory or thought about Ann & Erik to do so. Since the meeting youth group was how Ann & Erik met in the first place, there were quite a few people who had memories of their relationship’s early days. (Many of which were mildly embarrassing, but in a nice way, of course.) After an hour or so of this, the ceremony was pronounced done. Everyone then lined up to sign the marriage contract as witnesses. It was very nice, all hand-calligraphed by one of their meeting friends, with lines underneath for the signatures, meant to be displayed in their home afterward. (Ann’s parents admitted that they keep theirs stored in the basement, though.)

The reception was downstairs, and it was packed! Again, there was a great muchness of food and pie. (I really felt like I spent the whole weekend eating.) We ate and chatted and I spotted more people I hadn’t seen yet from across the room and then proceeded to never get a chance to talk to.

Afterward, we all went back to the hotel again, changed into less dressy clothing, and started gathering Grinnell people in the lobby. Ann & Erik then hosted an “afterparty” in their honeymoon suite, at which, like a true group of predominantly nerdy liberal arts grads, we proceeded to play multiple rounds of Werewolf, (aka Mafia). I ended up as a werewolf twice, but I am apparently not duplicitous enough to confuse the other villagers when they try to decide who to kill, so I always died early. Mark objected that others in the group were not taking the necessary deductive reasoning seriously enough. This suggests that this is perhaps not a party game meant to be combined with people who also want to drink. Or just talk to one another. But despite the lack of seriousness in proper werewolf hunting techniques, people had enough fun that Ann eventually had to kick everyone out so she & Erik could go to sleep.

The next morning, we went over to Ann’s parent’s house for brunch in their yard, yet again extending the feeling that we did nothing but eat for the whole weekend. The weather was a bit colder than I think many of us had been prepared for, not being well-acquainted with MN in May, but to me that just felt like camping, especially since we were under a tent. I was very sad when we all had to finally leave.

We had some time before we had to get to the airport, so I got Ann’s dad to give me directions on how to get to two of the most excellent bookstores I’ve ever visited, Uncle Hugo’s and Uncle Edgar’s, which Erik had introduced me to on a previous visit. (The are, respectively, an all sci-fi/fantasy bookstore and all mystery bookstore, in case you couldn’t tell from the names, and conveniently attached to one another.) I got to spend a blissful hour or so wandering around there, and ended up buying a couple of things. (I exercised great restraint, truly I did.) Then we really did start heading to the airport.

When we were almost there, we got a call from our friend Mike, asking if we’d like to have lunch at an Ethiopian place he’d found not too far away. So we turned back onto the highway and enjoyed yet another large and tasty meal. Then we really did go to the airport…

…only to discover that our flight, the one that both Mark & I and Matt & Heather were supposed to take to Chicago before changing planes to our respective final destinations, was not to be. Oh, sure, they boarded us, but then we sat at the gate for an hour, at which point they finally made an announcement that there was an electrical problem they were trying to get fixed, which in turn was followed by a long series of them turning all the power on and off and on and off, which didn’t really serve to make us feel great confidence in their eventual announcement that they thought they’d gotten it fixed, and eventually they made everyone get off the plane again. Then we got in line to be rebooked on other flights. By the time Mark & I got to the counter, there were no more flights going to NC. Matt & Heather did get to go back to Michigan, but wouldn’t be getting in until the wee hours of the morning. We went to have dinner with them in the airport, saw them off, and then went to the new hotel that the airline had booked us in to wait for our new, direct flight to NC the next day, on a new airline. Of course, the last minute ticket change made the airline flag us for extra screening, but we did, eventually, get home. It turned out to be a good thing that I had bought those books after all.

Right, so I know that I still haven’t gotten around to actually updating about Ann & Erik’s wedding in Minnesota, but I promise I will post, at least pictures, when I get back. In almost 3 weeks. ‘Cuz I’m going to Japan and China for work. Yay!

The schedule:

June 11: on a plane to Japan

June 12-13: Kyoto (I actually get to stay in a ryokan this time!)

June 14-16: Tokyo (I’m actually doing a day-trip to Sendai to see Kamiyama-sensei one of these days)

June 17: on a plane to China

June 17-21: Beijing

June 22-23: Lijiang

June 23-25: Kunming

June 26: on a plane back to the US

Clearly I will be very well-rested by the time I get back. I just cleared out my camera’s memory in preparation. Hopefully this will be the most awesome business trip ever.