Peter’s Blog V2

Today marked our last day in Japan.  We both were sad about ending this fun trip, but at the same time relieved to end this continuous pain from walking too much.

After checking out of the hotel, we locked our luggage up in a convenient coin-operated locker at Shinjuku Station.  This was the third time we used this service to avoid dragging heavy suitcases around – every train station we went through in Japan provided this service, although it wasn’t very cheap.  Seriously, though, NYC should learn to do this.  Many times in the past five years I had wished Penn Station or Grand Central or a large subway station in NYC would have lockers for short-term use.  I wonder how many people insisted on driving into New York just because they needed some place to leave a backpack while going into a party.

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At the onset of this trip, I thought we’d have a chance to practice and learn some Japanese.  Perhaps I could pick up a phrase or two, or ask for the whereabouts of a restroom.  It shouldn’t be hard to at least see some improvement in my pronunciation of the limited vocabulary that I commanded (two words: thank you and excuse me).  It didn’t happen.  Or let’s just say that we gave up at the comfort of being silly foreigners.  I rationalized that if English plus body language could get us nonsmoking seats, restroom, and the right dishes at a restaurant, there was no reason to insist on thanking the wait staff in their own language.  As a result, the only knowledge about the Japanese language that I acquired as an ignorant tourist were:

1. About 80% of the things ever said in public areas went “[something something something]maaaaaaaaaaaaas” or “[something]seeeeeeeen”, and most of them were in annoyingly cutesy-wannabe high-pitch female voices.
2. All the Japanese words that I knew well, i.e. names of places, were pronounced nothing like what I imagined.  For example, Harajuku actually wasn’t “HAA RAA JUU KUU”, but instead “hala JUU KOO”.  And I still couldn’t say it like the train announcement said it.

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After picking up a couple of heavenly sandwiches from the Family Mart downstairs, we enjoyed them in the brisk morning outside an after school classroom names WAC.  Then we decided that it wasn’t enough, and had seconds at a 24-7 McDonald’s filled with trendy youngsters who probably didn’t go home all night.  I spotted this girl brushing her teeth right at her dining table – it was sure reassuring that Japan’s crazy partiers cared about their dental hygiene.

Today’s destination was Odaiba, an artificial island in Tokyo Bay that had been developed into a vacation hotspot.  We took a train to Shimbashi first, and transferred to a special tram on rubber wheels that took us across the famous Rainbow Bridge.

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The mountain climbing trips did wear us our because we passed out watching TV at 9:30 and didn’t get up until 5:30am.  Hong got up and watched another hour of TV around 3, but she also got up slightly later.

We took a brief morning walk to Higashi (East) Honganji, a Buddhist temple around the corner.  That and Nishi (West) Honganji took up significant space on the map and were set symmetrically in central Kyoto, a feature reflective of Kyoto’s design basing off an ancient Chinese capital.  I love grid systems that have a logical pattern.

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It had become clear that we were adjusting for jetlag backwards: we were mostly awake between 12:30 and 7am, talking, showering, soaking beat-up feet and applying Tiger Balm, watching TV, etc, with a nap somewhere in there.  Turning on Japanese TV for the first time was pretty entertaining.  Too bad they didn’t play any prime-time shows at 5am.

Breakfast was at Cafe du Monde, a chain supposedly from New Orleans.  The one thing surprising and annoying about Japan was the smoking at public places, including most dining establishments.  During the course of our brief sandwich-and-coffee breakfast, 5 people had come, seated right near us, and smoked.  Our risk for lung cancer had just gone up a notch!

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It’s pretty lame to start every post with a jetlag update.  But, seriously, both people waking up to the morning at 11:58pm was not funny.  We lay down less than 3 hours ago!

Mixing half-ass attempts to sleep, shower, and magazines, we killed enough time before getting breakfast from 7-Eleven at 4:30.  Oh thank heaven.  Then we took our first nap of the day until like 8am.

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The jetlag problem improved drastically today as we woke up at 3 and stopped pretending to sleep by 3:30.  We carried on some deep conversations (because 3 hours of sleep really cleared our heads like Drano would a toilet) for two hours, then we stepped our for an early morning walk like a grandparent-aged couple.

Breakfast at a convenience store was something else needing to come off our check list.  What better time to do it than a time when nothing else was open?  I got myself a ginger-honey-lemon drink from the heater (instead of refrigerator) because any warm drink other than tea/coffee would be considered weird in the US.  For food, I got a sandwich and she got a curry bread, both of which were pretty good.

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From way back, I had expected to experience jet lag on the first morning.  I even planned around it strategically by arranging the trip to the fish market, which starts its daily business before dawn, on the first day.  There’d be neither painful attempt to wake up early, nor would early bird sleeplessness be too much of a problem.

Or would it?  It’s 1 freaking am and I’m more awake than I ever would be in the office.  It’s not even funny… what kind of transpacific trip wakes one up before 3am???

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