What a Long Strange Trip It's Been, pt 1
2005-08-03,

Yes, I know it's been a month and yes, I know I said I would try and post while on the road. Well, that didn't happen (the posting, that is; we actually went on the trip, silly).

Where to start? The beginning, I suppose. I think I'll even partition this up a little for easier reading. Here we go.

The Trip Out

Before this, I'd been on exactly two plane trips, one to northern FL over 10 years ago and, as you might recall, my work trip to Germany in April. Luckily, the Germany trip I think adequately prepared me for the crazy-long flight to come. After a short jaunt to Detroit, it was 12+ hours in the air. Thanks to some assistance from a Benadryl knock-off, we managed to sleep through a fair portion of the flight. And it as worth sleeping, because the choice of in-flight movies was pretty atrocious. It was a 'family' movie extravaganza, with The Pacifier (proving that Vin Diesel truly cannot act - is if that were a burning question of the age), Because of Winn Dixie (which actually seemed pretty cute, in a catch-it-on-cable when you're at home sick kind of way) and Guess Who? (which I barely saw). As I was falling in and out of sleep during the latter two films, my brain tried desperately to make sense of what was happening and managed to merge the two movies into one. This made for a very convoluted storyline, I assure you.

Anyway, thanks to the rest and to two pairs (one for each of us) of compression stockings from work to save our lower limbs from swelling from 12 hours of relative inaction, we made it to Tokyo basically sane. Immigration took much less time than we feared, and we met with Bird's husband, NS, still feeling somewhat pleasant. Our traveling wasn't over, however; since Tokyo-Narita airport isn't really all that near Tokyo and their apartment is on the opposite side of the city, we still had two hours of train and public transit ahead of us. The train was cozy, and it was nice to stand for a while on the metro, even if we were lugging most of our baggage around with us. We even had a short taxi ride from the metro station to their place. I think the only thing we didn't ride on getting there was a boat. That would've been cool: To Tokyo by land, sea and air!

Tokyo

Our time in Tokyo was definitely too short, but it was also definitely worth it. Our first day there, NS took us on a whirlwind tour of some of the more interesting spots in their area, including a number of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines (which mainly shared the same grounds), which seemed like they were around every corner. NS said that the Japanese are generally a superstitious people, and I could believe it. We paid our respects where they were due.

We visited the museumized home of the third Shogun of Japan, a sprawling compound that sported a lot of history and a crazy beautiful garden. We toured around a neighborhood that was known for its sweet potato-based products (food, snacks, beer, etc.) and a courtyard featuring 540 Buddha statues. I got a lot of good shots from there, but I did not, in fact, find a Buddha that looks like me - or with which I associate - as the brochure asserts (without guarantee, of course). Our lunch was at an authentic local noodle restaurant, where I had my first try at soba noodles. Yum! And fun, too. The deal is that you've got a bowl of plain noodles, and a separate bowl of a sauce, to which you can add flavourings like green onion, sesame, wasabe, etc. You then dip a chopstick-full of noodles into the sauce and slurp, noisy acceptable. In fact, it's an oddity to not make noise eating noodles (as opposed to making noise-eating noodles, as Word's context squiggly suggests-- how quiet dinner would be!). It's also a trick not to splatter yourself with sauce while slurping, I learned.

Two realized that, with my level of busy right now, that I'm never going to get any of this posted in nay kind of timely fashion unless I do pieces parts, so I'm going to say "to be continued" until next post.

To be continued...

Two good quotes on my Google homepage the other day, listed consecutively:

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

- GK Chesterton

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.

- Nora Ephron

-- End Transmission --