Random – World Order / Genki Sudo

Ok, yeah, it’s been a month or two since we posted and this is going to seem like a really odd post given that length of time passing… but I have to share this because I think it’s way too cool not to.

First, I saw this group / guy in a music video at the airport leaving for India a couple of months ago.  I sent Susan a text to figure out what it was.

That was this video.  She also found this one from Tokyo.  Add this one with that is a funny dating scene.

Then tonight I found out they had a new video.

Between my first discovery in September and tonight, however, I decided to learn a bit more about this guy Genki Sudo.

Wow.

Seems he honed his dancing skills in the MMA.  Here are a few of his fight entrances - just as beautiful and with a serious degree of flair.

So, okay… the guy was in the MMA.  Was he good?  Uh… yeah.  Not just good, 16 and 4 good.  Also, stunningly graceful.  He even does his dances move IN THE RING to taunt guys.  Check it out.  (Susan was impressed, but not excited about the fighting…)

Anyway… the guy has retired from fighting and is doing the band thing… plus he is a writer, practicing Buddhist, baseball player/team manager, and is pursuing a master’s degree.  Wiki link.  Pretty impressive… just thought I’d share.

Trains

Today was a holiday and our 5th anniversary. We went to Asakusa to see the shrine Susan hasn’t had the chance to visit yet. The train ride there wasn’t much to speak of, but the return was pretty crowded. I thought it would be the worst I’d see for a while.

I was wrong.

I decided to visit the old friend that had taken receipt of my new xbox. That required about an hour’s ride across four trains. The longest was about 25 minutes and it was a sardine can. Some people had nothing to hold on to so they just ended up bouncing in the pile of people surrounding them. Fun. I, on the other hand, just filtered deeper into the car where at least I could hold on to a luggage rail.

The trip this morning was nice. It was fun to see Susan use some of her new Japanese words, no matter how basic, they help and show her commitment. Given that this is our anniversary and we aren’t doing anything overly significant, I’d like to publicly point out how great a wife she’s been the past five years.

First, she’s put up with me. That alone deserves a trophy.

Next, she’s given me an awesome daughter. She’s a great mother that has struggled with the choice between the career woman she had always been and the stay at home mom she (most of the time) wants to be. Olive is a shining example of the time her mother commits to her.

Third, she’s undertaken quite the change with moving with me, not once but twice… and that second one wasn’t even domestic or to an English speaking country! This woman desperately loves her family but is strong, flexible, and loving enough to find a balance between the two.

It’s been a wonderful, challenging, growing and loving five years. It hasn’t been easy or perfect but where is the fun in that?

So, as I ride a slightly less packed train a few thousand miles away from where I met my wife all those years ago, I declare to quite the audience: I LOVE YOU SUSAN. ＼(^o^)／

Photos and Videos

A quick post, as it’s nearly midnight.

I’m back from India and I’m working through pushing my photos & videos to the internet.

I had a blast in India thanks to all the wonderful people there.  What’s great is that I got to see a lot of people I haven’t seen in years, some that I don’t even have the opportunity to work with any longer.  I also discovered that Olivia has an international fan club!  I came home with 2 dresses, a tunic and a stuff puppy!

Photo Set – with still some more photos to come…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nolife/sets/72157627642095280/

Videos – including Olivia’s gifts, some driving and Bollywood dancing!

http://www.vimeo.com/ilkirk/videos

Goodnight.

Travel – Pune Photos & Videos

I’ve taken a handful of photos that are going into a Flickr set.  More to come, I’m sure.

I’m also taking video from time to time.  They’ll be on Vimeo.  So far I’ve got one for driving / traffic and one for scenery.

Pune Travel – Day One (travel day)

It’s lengthy.  You’ve been warned.  And to think, you get the edited version!

Once on the flight from Tokyo I was struck by the absolutely ridiculous music that was being played in the plane.  I don’t remember if other planes do this at this point because my brain has been corrupted by these two most recent flights both doing it.  Over the in-cabin speaker system was “music” that sometimes sounded like horrible 80s MIDI WAV files – super cheesy renditions of songs I am not familiar with.  Then, when they weren’t playing those MIDI tunes, they had what could have been music stolen from “It’s a Small World” where the artist was rocking the Glockenspiel as the only instrument.  Wow.  This is great.  Could I just listen to the dull sounds of the engines or something instead?

After a while I began to realize that the online seat selection tool was not particularly accurate regarding how full the plane would be.  Well, maybe it’s not an accuracy thing, but there were a lot of people that hadn’t checked in or something, so they hadn’t been assigned seats.  Looking at the online check-in I had expected lots and lots of empty seats.  Wrong.  There were some – the guy a couple rows up (Mr Wandering-Eyes) was sitting in the middle aisle and had no one next to him.  This was my plan for the next flight, but I’m beginning to think that’s not actually going to happen.  Crap.

Mr Wandering-Eyes got that moniker because every time any of the female flight attendants would walk by, he’d lean out into the aisle to check her out.  They were wearing these nice floral-print, Asian-style dresses that fit properly.  Amusingly, though, the men were in these drab green suits that were really poorly fit – the jackets were too big, the pants really boring.

It was interesting to find that the overhead bins were being stuffed full of just-under-the-size-limit carry-on luggage.  Instead people were carrying very reasonable amounts of luggage and quickly stowing it before taking their seats.  In fact, boarding was really simple because everyone was so organized.  Ah, Japanese culture.

So we’re pushing back from the gate and taxiing to the runway.  The chief steward comes on, first speaks in Malaysian, then English, and then hands the mic to a woman to do the Japanese bit.  This is when I learn the flight time – 6 hours 55 minutes. The flight info I had never actually spelled out the flight times and I hadn’t bothered to work out all the time zones to do that math myself.  This is going to be a long flight.

They begin the safety video – no live demonstration here – and it’s the friendliest, most laid-back and smiling safety video ever made. The lady speaking is really cool about the whole thing, speaks to two little kids about their seat belts, etc. The part I love the most is when they go back to that family during the life vest part. Dad is on the far aisle seat with Mom next to kid #1 and kid #2 on the near aisle seat. They’ve all got their life vests on and the lady is speaking over the scene about taking care of your own vest before the others. All four of them are sitting calmly in their seats with the biggest smiles on their face, coolly securing kid #1′s vest. HAH!

They start bringing the peanuts around. The bags are sitting in a nice wicker basket and the attendant allows the passenger to take whatever they’d like. I begin eating them and I’m struck by something amazingly stupid. The bag has the word “peanuts” in English on the front, along with a picture of both a shelled and an unshelled peanut. On the back is an ingredient list – no, that’s not the stupid part – that says it has peanuts and oil or something. Right below the ingredient list, though, is the allergy information. “This product may contain peanuts.” It may? Thanks for the heads-up in the tiny print on the back left corner, all that other stuff didn’t do it for me.

Here I start flipping through movies. I didn’t realize I had an on-demand option until much later in the flight so instead I pick up the new Pirates movie about 10 minutes in. Instead of digging around for one of the other movies that I wanted to watch only to find it 20 minutes down, I stuck with Pirates. It was good – I actually enjoyed it. Not any sort of an instant classic, but fun with great special effects. During the movie came a meal. I had… chicken? I don’t quite remember. I know the plate also had cold udon noodles complete with the bottle of sauce and the thin slices of onion. Ah, I really like Japanese food.

After the movie came some uncomfortable sleep. The wine with the meal had helped make me drowsy on top of staying up pretty late the night before. I also remembered the trick I’d found during the New Zealand flight, too – the headrests on some planes will fold up on the sides, effectively allowing you to lock your head in place. I shoved my headphones back into my Zune and put on a recently recommended soundtrack – Transatlanticism from Death Cab. I slept for an unknown period of time until I was awakened by a sudden pain in my knee. I thought it was just a bit of stiffness, so I stretched it out into the aisle a few times. I placed it on the floor and pushed the ball of my foot down – PAIN. LOTS OF PAIN. What in the hell is wrong? Did they hit me with the cart? It hurts to the touch… I massage it a bit, stretch it, etc. What’s going on here? I give up worrying after a while.

At some point I found the on-demand videos and began another movie. I watched most of “The Trip” and it wasn’t too bad. Odd, a bit dry, but good. Very much like Sideways as I had suspected. I wasn’t able to finish it though. As we began to approach Kuala Lumpur they played a 5 minutes advertisement for Malaysia. It was piped over the in-cabin speakers and preempted everyone’s videos. It was a really long song about how wonderful a place it is. Then, after that came a lady talking about how awesome the airport is and then more about Malaysia I guess… I really didn’t pay attention. After all that was said and done, though, my movie suddenly popped back on. Of course I still couldn’t watch it very well because they kept making announcements… and the announcements were really loud in my nice headphones. Eventually I gave up and turned it off… probably only about 5 minutes from when they would have turned it off anyway.

Somewhere along the flight I also saw the end of the X-Men movie. Blah, whatever. Not my thing.

At this point I was really tired of being on the plane. Somewhere along the way we had a second “meal”, this time it was onigiri. Yummmm! It was basically the same one I had in the Narita airport right before I got on the plane – it was one of the complicated ones that has the nori separated from the rice until you open it in the right combination. The filling was salmon (I could read “sake” in hirigana!) for both of the onigiri I ate.

Finally we landed. Finally I found out my knee was really hurting. I couldn’t put my weight on it, so I limped out of the plane and part of the way down the relatively empty concourse. I called Susan to figure out if I was going to die. I let Christine know I was safely on the ground – I figure since I ask her to do the same when she travels that I should return the favor. I realized that I don’t think my or Susan’s family has any idea how to get us on the phone since my Skype number forwards to my cell. I need to fix that information gap.

KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) is supposed to be a really beautiful, awesome airport… but it still felt like an airport. Whats worse is just how dang empty it seemed in the international concourse. First, there were very few people around. Next, almost the only stores available were duty free shops, all selling the same things as every other duty free shop. Finally, after limping around (which eventually soothed my knee) for a while I found the one place that seemed to sell food as a meal as opposed to sweets or gifts or something. Of course I did my whole decision paralysis for a bit – I stood at a distance reading the menu, watching the order placing, the order pickup, etc. I nearly bailed out because I didn’t have anything but Yen for cash and I had no idea what a “RM” would convert to. I walked halfway away before I listened to Susan and Christine admonishing me (as they’ve done lately) for not eating, then I turned around, sucked it up and went for the order. I got a chicken curry dish and a black tea. I paid with my credit card. The girl didn’t know how to do the payment, so she had to get someone else. I still don’t know what a RM converts to, i’m just glad the card wasn’t declined. I got the food, sat, ate, and moved on. No big deal, you big baby.

I laid on the benches near my gate for a while. It was really strange – the gate area had a security checkpoint with scanners, etc, but it wasn’t manned until right before boarding. That meant everyone had to gather outside that checkpoint which was relatively okay because there were a lot of benches. I got there pretty early so for a while I could lay down and stretch out. I did a flaky Skype chat with Susan and Olivia. I napped-ish, but the tea was coursing strong through my body keeping that from going too far. My head hurt. My body ached. I took some naproxin, as that’s all I had for aches. I sat around for a bit until the gate opened up.

Eventually boarding starts, but I can’t understand the lady speaking. I see a crush of people. I decide to remain seated. I’m on the aisle anyway. And I’m quite unlikely to get that big free middle aisle like I was thinking I would, so why rush? I finally go on board to a very full plane.

(From here I slip into a bit of a conversation, rather than the narrative style from above. Sorry, as it might get a little confusing…)

Susan’s take on things so far.

It’s an adventure here.  I don’t think I could be more of an alien had I landed on Mars and set up camp.  Olive and I stick out to the extent that people queue up to take pictures (mostly of her because she’s… well a daffodil among the violets).  I’m not joking.  I have a picture of people set up to take her pictures.  I know a little chunk of the language.  Enough to be polite.  Enough to make my needs known and be kind about it.  Enough to make it on a daily basis.  I am taking lessons, but the growth is tortuously slow.  Even if I learned the language to a native level, I would never fit in here.

At heart, I come from a small town.  My mind expects a certain amount of space.  It isn’t here.  Tokyo hasn’t been a small town for about a thousand years.  There is the most interesting blend of ancient and modern.  The juxtaposition is sometimes jarring.  There are shrines everywhere.  They are wedged between skyscrapers.  They are several centuries old and they sit randomly next to neon lights and shopping malls.  There is no land left unused.  There are people, buildings, roads, and cement everywhere I look.  And for the most part, it is immaculately cleaned and cared for.  Even side streets. Every morning, the storefronts and sidewalks are hosed down and swept off.

Every single female wears heels and full makeup every day, no exceptions.  They are stunning, for the most part.  They work really hard for it, but the efforts are definitely not in vain.  The men wear suits and ties, mostly tailored with clean lines, expensive shoes, and leather briefcases.  The people are friendly, but deeply shy.  They stare when they think I am not looking.  I am always looking.  I cannot help it.  I make babies cry here, just by being.  The more grown up children apparently think I’m the shiz.  They run up to me and practice their English.  I made a business man walk into a column.  I’m not sure if it was in awe or in ugh.  I do get propositioned fairly regularly by foreign men in Roppongi.  My curly hair is cause for wonderment.  I’m not blonde, but my hair is light enough and different enough that I have felt a ‘ghost’ hand or two touch it at crowded street crossings.  Considering I am a full head taller than most of the females and a good many of the men, that is quite the feat.

I cannot iterate how bizarre it has been.

And yet I have settled into a life here.  I don’t miss work.  I hang out with Olive on a daily basis.  We walk the streets of Tokyo everyday.  We go to playgrounds and parks with no fear of crime or violence.  I forget to lock the door to my house sometimes and I’m ok with it.  I have left my purse sitting on a park bench, in a seat in a restaurant, and in a public bathroom.  It was either immediately returned to me or waiting for me untouched when I returned.  People are polite and kind to a fault.  If I didn’t miss my family so terribly, I could live here indefinitely and probably be healthier for it.

But I do miss my family.  I miss my friends.  I miss being able to read billboards and traffic signs.  Magazines and books, my most basic refuges, are all but denied me here.  If I didn’t have an Ipad, computer, or internet I would go nuts for lack of reading.  I miss being anonymous.  I miss belonging.  I miss twinkies and Target.  I miss wide expanses of green, growing things and dark, starry nights.  I miss my Mother’s face.  I miss driving my car.  I miss my home.

But I am here and here is just fine.

Travel – Summary

So… if you’re keeping up at home, I’m now sitting in India.  Yes, I left our new home in Tokyo to visit India for a week.  It’s not easy, leaving the girls behind in our adopted home, but I think they’ve had a reasonable adjustment period and will be okay for this time.

The trip was pretty lengthy – mentally it seems like it should be a pretty short trip.  I’m already in Asia, we’re only 3.5 hours time different, etc.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean much.  I was in the air for 11.5 hours.  If you count all the time I was busy travelling, it ends up a lot more… 18 or 19 hours I guess.  Of course it’s more coming from the states because that’s already ~17 hours in the air.  Whatever the cause, it’s a lot.  An airport bus at 0730, flight from Narita to Kuala Lumpur at 1040, almost 7 hours in flight, 3 hours layover, another 4.5 hours in flight, then a car ride for 3 or 4 hours to the hotel in Pune.

I’m working on a more detailed post about my flight, but all in all, it was long but I’m safe.  I’ve gotten some sleep, plenty of food and I’ll be going out in an hour or so for a bit of trying to play golf.  We’ll see how that goes.  Tonight might have me visiting with old friends and I’ll be doing a little catch-up work ahead of a busy week.

More (and much longer) to come.

Food

So apparently I’m not eating enough. Recently a photo of me surfaced on Facebook of me being hit by a pie. The public reaction was positive and humorous, but it seems the private reaction was different. A few people spoke to either Susan or I mentioning I was looking thin – thinner than usual at least. I shared this with a close friend who agreed and suggested I track my food for a bit. Being a geek with a new fancy phone, I dove in. Quickly I realized that I was likely eating 250 kcal for breakfast, 450 ish for lunch and maybe around 800 for dinner. Yeah… 1500 some calories for a guy with a base metabolism rate likely in the 2000 range! Oops?

So the message is that Susan is trying shove food in front of me constantly now. I’m doing a bit better and it has improved my mental state which been a bit lacking recently. Funny how that works – fuel your body / brain and you feel better.

Here’s the thing, I have a couple things that make eating a bit harder. No, I’m not going discuss gross biological things. See, I’m indecisive at times. Twice I’ve stood in the massive “food garden” of Mitsukoshi and freaked out on the inside because of too many choices. Next, when I’m not in a strong mental state I get especially strange about personal interactions like the simple act of ordering food. Suddenly I’m paralyzed and unable to eat because I don’t want to interact with people. Next, because of that high metabolism (yes, it’s a blessing to many people, I know) I get hungry quickly after eating. Plus, eating here is a bit different as we’ve discussed before.

So moving away from my pitiful food discussion…

I’m leaving off India tomorrow morning for a week’s visit. It’s not great timing because it seems that the second weekend I’m gone (I return Sunday evening) there are some big festival events next to our apartment. There are a few things Olivia might get to participate in, too.

Once I’m back in town there will a couple of holidays – Monday and Friday. Our 5 year anniversary is on that Friday so maybe we’ll do a picnic or something. After that it’s just a week to our family vacation which starts with our friend (and sort of daughter!) arriving in Tokyo. That includes trips to Disney Sea, northern Japan and Mt Fuji. Lots of riding around on bullet trains, a first for all of us! Needless to say, we’re really looking forward to this time.

A few weeks after the vacation time, we’ll visiting home for thanksgiving. I have 2 weeks, the girls 4.

New phones

Look, another post already!

Haha… I knew I was going to end up leaving something out of the other post and that I should review the photos before hitting the publish button.

As I began to look at the pictures I was reminded of our visit to Tokyo Disney Land!  This was our second trip, but we weren’t graced with good timing on this trip.  We went on a Sunday with a forecast of light rain.  We made the decision to go with a few pieces of information.  First, Saturday had a similar forecast and the rain was never much of anything, with long periods of dryness as well.  Second, Susan had been watching a website that published ride times on it and all day long things looked great.

There was some discussion of going on Saturday but I was in a pretty foul mood which I later determined with associated with caffeine withdrawal.  If you know me, you know I don’t drink a lot of caffeine, but in the three or four days leading up to that day I was drinking three or four cups of really strong black tea.  That Saturday I had none and ended up sleeping for the vast majority of day and acting super cranky when I wasn’t asleep.  Sunday wasn’t a banner day for me either, but it was an improvement.

We arrived at the park right at one hour after they opened.  It was misting and there was a bit of a cool breeze blowing – to the point where I sort of questioned having worn shorts that day.  We got in the park and headed toward Space Mountain.  Along the way we passed the Monsters Inc ride that we haven’t done yet and found the Fast Pass distribution was for 6:30p.  It was 9am.  The standby wait time was 150 minutes.  Something was different from yesterday it seemed.

We turned the corner to Space Mountain and found a similar scene – 110 minute standby.  There was nothing to do except suck it up and get in line, so that’s what we did.  We stood in the sometimes covered queue for an hour and a half, raising and lowering the one umbrella we’d thought to bring… and it wasn’t even one of the big ones we own.  Olivia did well and the line moved pretty steadily.  At least it wasn’t hot.  In the middle of waiting through this massive queue, we decided to pull up that web site Susan had been monitoring the day before to see how the rest of the park looked.  That’s when we found our mistake.

It said it was a 10 minute wait.

Apparently this website isn’t really trying very hard to provide even the smallest degree of accurate data.  There was no way that a weekend morning could really have a 10 minute wait on one of the most popular rides in the park.  So, I thought I’d do them a favor and use their crowd-sourcing ‘submit a time’ feature.  No impact.  The displayed ride time didn’t change in the least.  So even if this site was popular and people were submitting times, it still wouldn’t be helpful.

Oh well.  We’re here, let’s make the best of it.

Space Mountain was excellent.  It’s set up more like Disney Land in California where the cars are a little more like traditional roller coaster cars – two people sitting side-by-side instead of the three in a row design of Florida.  We were lucky enough to get the front car for Susan and Olivia, so they got a full view.  The initial climb doesn’t feature the astronauts and mission control stuff like it does in Florida, either.  The ride was super dark with great star light and music.  It, like always, felt fast and had plenty of turns and drops.  It also felt like it lasted a little longer, but that may be because I was too worried about Olivia enjoying it.  Turns out that worry wasn’t required – she was giggling the whole way through.

For days after the visit to the park she was talking about Space Mountain – it even featured prominently in a dream!  We’ve explained that Disney World in Florida has a Space Mountain ride so she’s gotten even more insistent that we go visit.  She’s picked out her guest list and is ready to go.

After Space Mountain we did Gadget’s Go Coaster which is the doppelganger to Goofy’s Barnstormer in WDW.  We rode the Tea Cups, Small World and Pirates.  We ate lunch – pizza – at some point in the day.  Olivia couldn’t stay still long enough to take her nap, so we weren’t able to stay quite as late as we might have liked.  That said, when we did finally start to leave around 3 or 4, the rain took a turn for the worse, changing from a mist to full on rain droplets.  I’m not sure how long that lasted, but it didn’t quite matter as we were already on the train home.

The trip was still fun and taught us a few lessons.  Take the umbrella, it’ll be okay.  Don’t trust the queue time website we found.  Don’t go on weekends.  From this we know to plan our next trip (when Christine comes over) on a weekday.

Another thing that I was reminded of from reviewing the pictures is that Olivia has somehow, at some point, learned the ubiquitous peace-sign gesture when having a photo taken.  I have no idea where she picked this up, but it’s a testament to it’s pervasiveness in the culture.  My favorite example of this is from Kamakura where she’s turned it into more of a protest statement rather than a cute gesture.  There is the added bonus of the handkerchief over her head turning her into an eastern European peasant girl.

Oh, Olivia has also taken an  interest in photography and a number of the photos from both Kamakura and the harbor brewery were framed by Olivia.  I would hold the camera, she’d look through the viewfinder and press the button.

All the Japan photo sets are here and the most recent, like usual, are here.

Still alive…

Uh, yeah, we’re still alive, just not writing about it.  The last post was at the end of July… so what has been going on for a month?  First and foremost it’s been hot.  We learned a new word from just hearing it so much – atsui – hot.

Despite the heat we’ve gotten out and about a few times.  We visit Patrick and his wife in Yokohama.  We spent a lot of the day walking around the city, checking out the nice parks and generally wearing Olivia out.  Unfortunately, in the process, we also wore Susan out pretty well and she came close to a passing out episode.  She didn’t and we were already on our way to their apartment for a late lunch so recovery wasn’t far away.  It did, however, put Susan into a bit of a sluggish mode for a week or so following.

The trip to Yokohama was good despite the heat.  We had a great time.  On our way out we took a boat across the bay to the main train station.  Olivia was very excited… but she feel asleep just a little before we got on board.  She was so asleep that we could demonstrate the depth of the sleep by messing with her – picking up and dropping her arms, etc.  I was amused.

In addition to Yokohama, we took a trip to Kamakura with Juan and Rie.  Juan had gotten his company car delivered and they invited us to go on a trip out of Tokyo with them.  The car ride was awesome – we got to see cool stuff like the Rainbow Bridge in addition to fully experiencing the madness that are the expressways around Tokyo.  There were so many merges, exits, turns, etc that you’d never, ever figure it out without a good navi system… and even with the navi is wasn’t easy.

Kamakura is well known for it’s really big Buddha statue, but amusingly we didn’t go visit that.  Instead we had a really fantastic lunch at a nice French restaurant next to the water.  There was a nice breeze, it was generally quiet, and we all enjoyed the time together.  It was the first time we had seen Juan and Rie for two or three weeks due to travel on their part.  The meal also marked an interesting first for Olivia – she ate calamari!  This came with no coaxing, no asking, nothing.  The plate was placed on the table near her, she reached over, grabbed the most squid-looking piece and shoved it in her mouth.  She devoured several pieces over the course of the next 5 or 10 minutes.

I had an awesome spaghetti dish completely full of mussels that was super delicious.  I have no recollection of other people’s food because I was so engrossed in my own.  After lunch we had dessert, which for Olivia was chocolate truffles that were really great… we had to help her eat 2 of the 4, mostly to avoid the sugar high that was going to come quickly afterwards.

Once we’d finished eating Susan took Olivia over to the little beach area near the restaurant.  They were planning on dipping their toes in the water – the first time for Olivia to be in the ocean – but Olivia stumbled a bit and ended up sitting in it.  So, covered in wet sand, she melted down, the sugar high crashing against nap time.  We did our very best with our handkerchiefs to wipe her down, but she was still pretty coated once we got in the car.

From there we had intended on visiting a few of the sites in the area – the bamboo forest and / or the Buddha – but it was getting a bit late in the day and Susan and I had plans in Tokyo that evening.  We felt really bad about asking our wonderful hosts to head back so quickly after arriving, but they were quite gracious.  Olivia slept for most of the ride home, waking once we were back in Tokyo.  Unfortunately, being covered in sand and sleepy, at some point she got sand in her eye.  We were having flashbacks to the eyeliner / corneal abrasion from earlier in the year as we tried to convince her to blink and not touch.  Once we were home, Susan flush Olivia’s eyes and shoved her into the shower to get the sand off.  That seemed to do the trick as we never heard any more about it.

That evening we went to Tennozu Isle to meet Chika, her husband and daughter.  We’d met Chika at a birthday party the week before.

Oh – I guess I should mention that, too!  We went to a birthday part for our friend Chie who Susan finally met for the first time that night.  It was at a Mexican restaurant near my office.  We met a number of new people and Olivia impressed everyone with good behavior in addition to a good grasp of how to play with an iPhone.  You can find a number of those photos on Facebook.

Anyway, back to the dinner with Chika.  It was at a pier-side brewery and we had seating on the patio.  Again, there was a nice breeze and a pleasant temperature.  I got the wheat brew that they brew on site – my first microbrew beer in ages and it was delightful.  Dinner was great, too – a huge seafood platter to start and great food in the main course.  Olivia played well with Izabelle, their 7 (?) month old.  She also played a bit with the children at the table next to ours, even charming them into sharing some fruit and birthday cake with her!

I’ve also done a lot of planning lately preparing for Christine’s trip to Tokyo.  This will be somewhat of a family vacation for us, what with generally “adopting” Christine when she moved to Nashville last year.  We’ll be visiting parts of Japan other than Tokyo, riding the shinkansen, etc.  The plan is to go to Aomori in the very north of the main island where we’ll visit a castle that is actually mostly original, as well as temples and such.  Then we’ll go see a bit of nature, walking along a beautiful stream where, hopefully, the leaves will have started to change their colors.  We’re also planning to visit a big horse park / playground thing up there.  From the north we’ll return to Tokyo briefly and then head over to Fuji.  I figured if she’s coming all the way over, she should see the icon… plus Susan and Olivia haven’t seen it… and I suppose I can’t say I’ve seen it either because all I did was walk up the side in the dark.

It’ll be great to have her over, as she and Olivia get along well and she fits in with us really well.  Plus, she’s one of the people that makes being away from Nashville tough.  If we could just find so way to have our friends and family a little bit closer, Tokyo would be even better.  Of course that isn’t to say we don’t love our new friends, too – it’ll be equally tough to leave them when the time comes.

I’m also preparing for a trip to India – I leave Tokyo on the 10th for a week.  It isn’t too much fun thinking about leaving Susan and Olivia behind in a city they aren’t completely settled in, but I think we’ve built a pretty good support system so far that can help out.

Olivia is still enjoying her daycare twice a week.  Susan and I continue to do our Japanese lessons and are slowly getting more comfortable with simple words and phrases.  I can generally handle big numbers at this point, but it’s still tough to process it from a native speaker at the normal speed.  Oh – and big numbers here are a bit odd because they change on 4 zeros, not 3.  For example: 10,000 is ten thousand in English, right?  It’s 1 man in Japanese.  (say “man” like you’re Jamaican )  This, of course, slows down your thinking just a little more.

Today (Saturday) was quite lazy and now (10p) it’s raining hard outside.  There is a typhoon moving toward / across the western part of the country so we’re getting the outer bands of drenching rain.  Tomorrow it’s likely to continue to rain, but we plan to visit the shopping district in Ginza, as that will be new for Susan.  The plan is also to go get cell phones for use here in Japan.  After some debate I’ve decided to go for the iPhone because of the simplicity of it.  You see, getting a cell phone here is really, really complicated in most cases, but the iPhone is one with very few choices involved.  Someone joked that it’s easier and quicker to get a bank account than it is a phone.  Once we’ve got smart phones in hand we’ll be able to use Skype on the go for phone calls that won’t require us to be tethered to the computer.  For those of you with phones that can run Skype – get it installed so we can talk easily!

I’ll have some photos to share shortly… tonight if I can keep focused.  Sorry about the long delay in writing, maybe we’ll be better for a bit.  Maybe.

Observation

(First of all, if you’re paying attention, yes, I’m writing this at nearly 3am…)

So I left the office a bit “early” today – 5pm – and stopped in the local watering hole on the first floor to enjoy the company of a coworker.  Technically you could have really considered it an extension of the work day because at least 75% of the time was talking about work, but that’s why I’m writing this post.  I’m writing this post because of what we casually observed happening on the street this evening.

I, with my back to the street, heard a car horn bleat, which is a bit odd, in combination with my companion’s exclamation of “ohhh.”  I turned, noticed a bicyclist in an odd part of the street and a stopped vehicle.  It seems the bike had come in contact with the car in some manner, but the bike was still on two wheels, so I didn’t think an awful lot of it.

And then it got interesting.

The car, something along the lines of a Lexus Hybrid, pulled to the curb and the back door swung open with some urgency.  Out stepped the gentleman passenger, at which point he called out to the bicyclist to return and converse about the situation.

So, about our gentleman passenger.  He was probably mid-thirties, wearing long shorts with a wild pattern and had an odd haircut for Japan – sort of a faux-hawk / buzzed on the sides thing.  Yet, despite this rather modern style, he had a certain air of money and status about him.

Yes… it seems likely he was a member of a well known Japanese social organization that will go unnamed.  If you’re not familiar, well… let’s say it would be similar to the subject of a well known and classically acclaimed trio of movies that starred Marlon Brando amongst many others.  Capisce?

So the gentleman, his driver, and the bicyclist had a nice, close quarters conversation on the side of the street.  I’m sure it was completely polite and gentlemanly.  As the trio were having said conversation, the police happened to drive by.  (Yes, happened – completely and utterly random, I’m quite certain of that.)

As a quite aside, there is a funny thing about the cops around here… they drive around with their lights flashing.  No siren, no rush, just cruising with traffic with their (red) light bars activated.  Odd.

Anyway, the cops approach as part of their normal patrol of the area and we cringe in anticipation of the result.  ”Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.”

They slow down next to the conversation.

They move on.

A few moments later, the conversation breaks up and they go their separate ways.  The small, quiet crowds that have gathered nearby go their separate ways as well.  One of the guys in the bar – he appeared to be an American, and I presume he’s “just off the boat” – expressed shock in the way it was handled.  My coworker and I reminded him that it’s not often men in surf-attire have expensive cars with drivers.  After a moment, the concept seemed to click for him.

Oh yeah – that’s another amusing thing.  Like I mentioned, these guys were in a Lexus hybrid.  It was a four-door sedan, which is quite commonly, but usually it’s a Toyota Century with curtains in the back.  (Note – WOW.  You really have to read at least introduction to that Wiki article linked for the Century.)  Apparently, though, the hybrid luxury cars are more expensive than any other cars, so it has become more a status symbol, at least for that particular crowd.

This is Japan, as they say.

Friends for the girls

So this morning marks a momentous occasion – Olivia has entered daycare in Tokyo.

Yep, today she’ll spend 3 hours in the daycare directly across the street from our apartment building, soaking up a bi-lingual environment with children around her age… something that has been a bit sparse / random.  Prior to this her interaction with children was a bit more free-form – maybe they met someone in the courtyard or perhaps she could find a reasonable friend at the play hall.  Now, however, I expect that a more structured environment will lead to a bit more structured relationships.

She and Susan visited the center on Tuesday and Olivia was quite upset that she wasn’t staying, which was a great indication that she wasn’t going to have much trouble letting go of mommy.  I’m sure this draws on her experience from daycare at home where she was going up to 5 days a week for full days.  Today she just barely remembered to give us hugs and kisses before she dove into the center.  On both occasions she remembered that this was traditional Japanese and you leave your shoes at the door.  Before we left home we went over her Japanese vocabulary, and reminded her that she should use both languages… this excites me greatly.

Beyond daycare, however, the girls have had some luck in making new friends.  The trip to the play hall on Tuesday (or was it Wednesday?) garnered a girl Olivia’s age.  As a double-bonus the little girl’s mother was someone Susan could get along with as well, so they’ve made plans to go to the Play Castle (??) on Friday.  This is in addition to the people that they’ve met through the Tokyo Mother’s Group which has gone on a bit of a summer hiatus.

There you have it – they are really settling in.  Olivia will attend daycare two days a week for the foreseeable future, partly for the friendship aspect and partly because Susan begins her weekly hour-long Japanese lessons next week.

What is daily life?

I thought it would interesting to share…

Once I leave the house, I head to the elevator and go 15 floors down to the lobby.  I’m greeted in the lobby by at least the front desk staff if not the doormen across the way – “ohayo gozaimasu” and some other phrase I’ve yet to figure out, despite hearing it every single time I go in or out the door.  Oh well… eventually.

These days I leave the apartment out the back door because it leads to the less steep walk to the office – I guess I shouldn’t be taking the lazy way, but it’s warm outside and stuff.  That walk takes me along a tree lined sidewalk next to the Spanish embassy walls, then along an only slightly busier street next to the competing (and newer) residential / office building.  About 3/4s of the way along this section I usually see the white-gloved gentleman telling the taxi drivers whether or not they are needed in the driveway situated down the hill from him.  He places his arms in a large cross to let them know to move on.

From here I take a right and approach the very busy street with an expressway running over the top of it.  You see, they’ve got this space constraint thing, so a vast majority of  their expressways are elevated, running directly over the busy surface streets.  It makes reading maps pretty interesting.  Depending on the exact place where I turned, I might pass the Saudi Arabian embassy.  I also walk over a couple of rotating concrete pads that turn the cars around as they exit the robotic garage.  On a few occasions I’ve been walking, blissfully lost in my music and not noticed a car coming from those garages. Oops.

Oh… who do I see along this walk?  Plenty of other people doing the same thing as me.  Men in their dress slacks, pressed shirts (quite often white) and about half of them with dark ties.  Some of their shirts are long sleeved, others short.  I’ve seen fewer men in coats lately, but they are still in the mix despite the temperatures and power saving measures.  I never really thought the short-sleeved shirts looked particularly good… until I broke down and bought a couple for myself.  It gets the job done – comfort with (some) class.  The women are most often in business attire with skirts and heels.  Yep – they are navigating the metro, sideways, etc. in heels.  I’ve watched them stand in the middle of a wobbly train without holding on, perched on a high heel.  Needless to say, they’ve got killer calves.  A fair number of the people are carrying attache cases in one hand.  I’m pretty confident they don’t have a heavy laptop in there… at least I hope they don’t because they’d wreck their shoulders!

Mixed in with the people walking are those on bicycles.  Of course there are plenty of bike messengers rushing along, but they are mostly in the street.  The people on bikes similar to Susan’s – baskets in front & back – are weaving between the street and the sidewalk as needed.  It can be tough to walk with sound isolating headphones and have a bike sneak up behind you!  Luckily I haven’t had any more difficulties with bikes since the 2nd week in Ginza.

So… I made it to the crosswalk under the expressway.  From here I usually take a slightly quieter route down sort of an alley.  It’s hard to call it an alley – there is a konbini and a half dozen restaurants plus a liquor store.  At the same time, it just barely squeezes two lanes of traffic and the noise levels are considerably lower.  For the first stretch we walk along the side of the road with some barriers protecting us from the cars, but after a while – when it changes to a one-way road – you’re just walking on the edge of the street.  Through here I pass a parking lot that holds about 6 cars.  You park and a blockade comes up behind your wheel.  When it’s time to go, you pay the automated machine and the blockade lowers.  The rate is phenomenally expensive – but I don’t quite remember exactly what it is.  Maybe 1000Y for 25 minutes?  That’s about $10.  Maybe it’s not quite that bad, but I know it isn’t cheap.  See why we don’t have a car?

Soon the street hangs a left.  This area is a touch more residential for a block until turning back into office buildings.  Here I often see people washing off their porch area, scrubbing it with a long brush, as their daily routine.  Sometime there will be someone sweeping with a traditional broom (it looks like a long stick with lots of smaller sticks strapped to it – it’s straight out of the 19th century), getting up all the cigarette butts and whatnot.  Somewhere along the route I usually pass the guys that do parking enforcement – they’ve got green uniforms with reflective vests. One carries a laptop in a rugged case.  They are commonly older guys.

Depending on how early I woke up and got out, I might pass school children on their way.  These are probably 6 or 7 year old kids in their uniforms (which includes the color of their backpack!) walking along the same streets as the rest of us… without their parents.  It’s awesome the freedom children have here.  They know their route and they follow it with their friends in small gaggles.  In a few spots I’ve seen crossing guards to make sure there aren’t any problems with that.  I sometimes wonder if some of them perhaps rode the train to get there – I know I’ve seen signs in the metro that seem to indicate that completely reasonable to believe.

Usually by the time I’ve gotten the office (a whole 15 – 20 minutes from home on a slow pace) I begin to see a lot of more tradesmen in uniforms.  You’ve got the window washers, the delivery men, the janitorial staff, and the maintenance guys.  Everyone is consistent… which, I suppose, is the definition of uniform.  Each one of them takes pride in his appearance and work – just like all of the other people I passed along the way.  Each of them is going to do his job today, albeit maybe without a lot of innovation, and he / she is going to go home knowing they did a good job.

As I enter the building the chorus of “ohayo gozaimasu” starts up again… although now it tends to be a little more mumbly or sing-song, with the stress in odd spots.  For example, “ohayo gozaimasu” might only be audible as “massss”… sometimes that literally all someone says!  The other phrase that is uttered often all day long is a variation of “otsukaresama deshita“… it too gets shortened in all sorts of ways.  Shortening words / phrases is apparently a trend these days… but that’s a whole different discussion.

So… that’s my morning.  The evening is generally the same, but in the dark.  I’ll tell you about that another time.

I miss you – when do you get here?

Ganbatte!

How do you describe sunrise from the highest mountain in Japan?  Stunning.

I had the opportunity to go up Mount Fuji this weekend with a co-worker and a friend of hers.  This is an overnight hike, starting around 10p with the goal to summit (12,355 ft) by sunrise which occurs around 4 to 4:30 in the morning – assuming you start at the most popular point, the 5th station (8,120 ft), which we did.  (We went up 4200ft) You start on a dirt path in the trees, but quickly break above the treeline and start walking on volcanic rock.  Eventually you start scrambling up rough rock paths, occasionally using your hands to pull yourself up because of the height difference between steps.

It’s kind of surreal to think that I walked throughout the entire night, the light of my headlamp mixing with hundreds of others to get up this beautiful mountain.  We rested relatively often, but never slept.  Think about that for a bit: we pushed our bodies to climb up a mountain through the entire time that we’d normally be sleeping.  For me, I didn’t do anything special on Friday night or Saturday morning.  I slept a little bit more on Saturday, but nothing amazingly different.

Along the path from the 5th station (Go-go-me) to the 10th (summit) station, you can find huts with food, drink, and if desired, lodging.  You find a number of people that started earlier in the day and took rest in the huts with the goal of going to the summit a little better rested.  It’s amazing the number of people over the age of 60.  It was also amazing the number of people that were extremely well outfitted with brand new gear… and seemed likely to be on their very first trip outdoors!

The hike was good, thanks to good weather and good company.  Because it’s all in the dark, there isn’t much to share of the ascent.  Their are plenty of photos, however, once the sun began to rise.  I’ve also got some video that I’ll share at a later time.

We took in the sunrise from the 9th station within sight of the summit, but not quite.  Based on Fri’s experience, however, getting the sunrise from here is a bit better than the summit because we had a lot less of a crowd to deal with in an effort to see the event.  Standing there, starting to get quite cold, but high above the clouds, provide such a wonderful sense of accomplishment.  We’d struggled along the way – I carried our companion’s backpack for a couple of stations – but we’d done it.

The final ascent was pretty miserable – the trail quickly became clogged – but it was worth the wait.  First we got our pictures at the top to commemorate the event.  Next we sought out food!  I got ramen on the top of Fuji-san… that was pretty awesome and tasted delicious.  I can’t say that it’s a fair evaluation to compare it to ramen at sea-level, but I know that at that moment there was hardly anything that could have been better.  We also had the opportunity to stretch out on our backs without the cold hard ground leaking all the heat from our bodies… that was a nice comfort.

The area at the summit gives you plenty of opportunity for souvenir purchases, but I figured my memories and photos were enough to last longer than any trinket that I’d promptly lose.

The descent was tough – it was very loose volcanic rock for the vast majority.  We took a switchback trail, winding down the side of the mountain and it never seemed to end.  In the first part you had to cover your face very well so as to keep the dust from evading your lungs, plus sunglasses to keep it from your eyes.  The sunglasses also protected you from the completely un-shielded sun that was bearing down on you.  In time, though, the dust creation settled down and we slid into the cloud bank.  We took a few opportunities to rest – generally at my prompting due to my concerns about my ankle.

A few things that were amusing / eventful, but don’t fit into the prose above:

• We took a bus from Tokyo and had to swap to another near Fuji to get us to the 5th station.  I left my Blackberry in that first bus at 9p on Saturday night.  It was found and returned to me by Monday morning.  I love Japan.
• That final bus to Fuji 5th station was packed with high school kids.  They were chugging energy / glucose packets and generally acting like really excited high schoolers.
• On that same bus, they announced that they couldn’t drive up to the station with the A/C on.  Listening to the engine, I could understand why.
• I encountered my first squat toilets at the 5th station.  They stunk.  I didn’t need to use them luckily.
• All toilets on the mountain stunk – you either smelled those or the diesel generators as you approached a station.
• Looking at 100s of headlamps plodding through the dark is really strange.

So, while the Japanese have the saying “everyone should climb Mount Fuji once; only a fool would climb it twice,” I’m rather likely to go twice.  The feeling (not the sore muscle bit) I have after getting down and rested is that it was an amazing experience.  I’ll be back – if only to take Olivia up when she’s old enough to drag herself up and appreciate it.  That doesn’t mean I won’t whine about the climb, though.