Chekov's Gun (Japan, Day 2 Part 2)

"One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep." – Chekhov, Russian playwright

To catch you up from the last post, we’ve been back in the states a week now. My older son and his wife got in yesterday. They did an additional week of touring with Zack. Earle and I were glad to be home, but we still wish we could have seen everything they did. So I asked for photos.

Our family, like every family, has its on lingo; its own traditions. Somehow, 8 or 10 years ago, we started with the Get Out tradition. It goes like this: Mom texts (either) son: “How’s it going?” Son texts mom “Get out.” There are variations to this theme. In 2013 I visited with a family friend in Durham who lives in Japan. I knew he’d be seeing my son in Japan in a few months later so I entrusted him with a small piece of paper to give to Zack , which he put in his wallet and deployed as I asked. . It said simply “Get out.”

So when “the kids” headed to Kyoto’s Iwatayama Monkey Park, here’s the pic I got. It is the pic 1 of only 2 pics I got from the second half of their trip. Ah well.

Back to our touring. I left off with us in Yokohama. After a lovely but lengthy morning walking tour, we headed to some indoor destinations, including a walkthrough of Yokohama’s Red Brick Warehouse, formerly customs buildings from the 1920s. I enjoyed the variety of goods and both my credit card and I could have spent more time there. But it wasn’t lunch yet and we were all on the hungry side, and one of us was on the tired side(!)

Traveling with vegetarians lead us to some eclectic dining options including an Italian chain restaurant, Saizeriya. This one was near the Bay in the large Yokohama World Porter mall. We window shopped a bit and then were happy to sink into comfortable seats and make use of an unlimited beverage bar. We filled up on pizza, salads, and pasta. Even this family restaurant reminded us of Japanese innovation. The table had an electronic device to summon the waitperson, who in turn recorded our order on a small electronic tablet.

Legos and Buzz Lightyear - universally beloved.

"American" section in an upscale department store

Ever present fake food - this time for our Italian restaurant

Ridiculously cute bunny at the Sylvanian Family Cafe

After filling up we journeyed into the mall and had a uniquely Japanese experience. We had our pictures taken in a purikura booth. This is similar to a photo booth as we know it, but you are photographed on a green screen. Your picture is customized based on the theme of the particular booth – ours gave us a “cute” look – enlarging our eyes similar to illustrations in Japanese manga. After your photo session you get to further edit your pics by adding hearts, bows, sayings and other “cute” images, and them – you wait a moment and out rolls a picture strip! You also get an email of your prints. Lovely!

Our booth

Lucky for all 4 of the 5 of us, the purikura booths where adjacent to a videogame parlor. Lucky for the 5^th of us, there were seats nearby.  Actually, before I sat down, at the urging of our kids, Earle and I played a quick round of air hockey. To our surprise, at certain time intervals, a stack of pucks were released at once, turning our languid game into a frantic one! Afterwards Nat and Lilly tried a drumming game and I wandered over to the seat across the mall. Eventually, all four of them found connected Mario Olympic machines and had a fierce battle. I enjoyed watching the onlookers stopping to watch my family play for blood.

Another universal obsession. (Earle is behind the column.) 

Next we were off to the Landmark Tower, the second tallest building in Japan. En route, we passed the Nippon Maru, a retired sailing ship used as a training vessel. We didn’t stop as Zack was eager for us to see the amazing view on the observation area on the 69^th floor. We were amazed by the fastest elevator in Japan, which got us there is 40 seconds.

Nippon Maru

On the observation floor, we were able to see the city with a 360 degree view, but unfortunately it was too cloudy for a sighting of Mount Fuji. But we were astonished by the vistas that spread out around us, as far as the eye could see.

Zack asked if we could find his building and we were able to orient outselves by first spotting the baseball park and navigating our way visually to his part of the city. Then Zack  casually walked over to one of the telescopes and called me over. He zoomed in, and in, and in on his neighborhood.  

He zoomed in on his block, his building, and then his floor. And then I saw them… three sheets of white paper taped to his apartment window.

You guessed it!

O U T!

Landmark Tower

O U T! 

Size Matters (Day 2 Part 1 in Japan)

On, Tuesday, May 16^th, in the Land of the Rising Sun, dawn broke at 4:30 am. Earle and I had already been awake a half an hour and were stumbling about bleary eyed when the early morning rays pierced our hotel window in Yokohama.

The reasons for our poor sleep? Adjustment to a new time zone, yes. Overtired from traveling, yes. But it also had to do with the size of our room. Our bed was so small (how small was it?) that I could not get up and go to the bathroom without hitting Earle’s feet. Which is to say 1. They hung off the bed. 2. There was no clearance between his dangling feet and the wall. In fact, the corner of our bed touched the wall. There was so little floor space that we each kicked assorted suitcases in the night. It was small.

Views of Our Yokohama hotel room

And to say something was small, is not a derogatory remark. It is more about economy of space. Japan is roughly the size of California and their population is 127 million to our 318 million. So stewardship of space is essential.

Many things were small in Japan. No space was wasted. The Japanese people themselves tend to be smaller than Americans. (Though how Japanese women pull off short AND willowy, I don’t know, but they do it beautifully.) Automobiles in Japan looked like Hot Wheels. Parking spaces were comparably sized down and natives must have some magic origami style bending capability to get in and out of their parked cars. (I’m also sure they did it gracefully.)

Adorable Tiny Vehicle

 

Another tiny vehicle

Back to our morning, we were revived by hot showers in a tub that while small in length and width, was knee high to accommodate the Japanese appreciation of a good soak. (Appreciation of a good soak? Another high mark on my score card.)

When our party reconvened for breakfast out, we discovered one thing that was larger in Japan – slices of bread! We had toast that put Texas Toast to shame. Also, Nat ordered “potato salad elegance” which equated to a big honking plate of delicious French fries with some tasty seasoning salt. We ate these with our pinkies extended to be elegant.

Nat and Lilly at breakfast - enjoying "potato salad elegance" 

Next stop was to see Zack’s apartment for ourselves.  The elevator there was too small for the five of us and we set off the weight alarm. (Or perhaps it is better said that we were too big for it.) I thought Skyping with Zack had prepared me for the apartment’s modest size but in American realtor lingo, it was a real cream puff.  Here is a photo of the five of us in the apartment. That is the entire breadth. I’ve included a pic of his kitchen (no counter), washer (no dryer, Japanese, for the most part, hang their clothes to dry) and the bathroom. The grand tour also included the balcony which included a clever fire escape that dropped a ladder to the apartment balcony below. The entire apartment would have fit in our master bedroom and bathroom. Still, it was efficient and well-located in a great neighborhood.

Zack's Apartment Building

All 5 of us in Zack's Apartment

Zack's kitchen and foyer

Small, but deep tub

Bathroom and Washing Machine

Fire escape hatch

View from Zack's balcony

Zack had planned what he called “a gentle walking day” to acclimatize us to the time change and get us in the habit of walking. (I’ll say here that Earle and I each wear fitbits which both indicated we’d racked up almost 9 miles by bedtime. Hello, Aleve!) We took a beautiful walk through displays that constituted Yokohoma’s  Garden Necklace which was their National Urban Greenery Fair. Each district hosted a small representative garden and we saw numerous displays that were in their prime, including a rose garden and a baseball themed display at Yokohama Stadium. I was captivated by the mascot! I was also delighted to see a pug and his owner stopping to smell the roses. 

Adorable, right?

Lilly, amid Lillies

Pug! 

Our walk lead us out to the Osanbashi Yokohama International Passenger Terminal. It was modern, spacious and offered beautiful views of the city. Unfortunately, no ships were docked that day, but here’s a link to an ariel view so you can get an idea of what it was all about as well as a few pics I took.

Osanbashi Yokohama International Passenger Terminal

My feet and knees were pretty tired by then so we found a place to rest in the cool interior. Soda machines offered refreshing options – I had something peachy, while Nat made an unfortunate selection that included suspended gelatin-like bits.  And then, I experienced my new passion: gachapon machines! These are like gumball machines that offer one of a selection of toys for 200 or 300 yen  apiece ($2 or $3) The toys available were the cutest things imaginable. I was hooked! Here’s what Wikipedia says about the name: "Gashapon" is a Japanese onomatopoeia composed of two sounds: "gasha" (or "gacha") for the sound of a crank on a toy vending machine, and "pon" for the sound of the toy capsule dropping into the receptacle. Pretty clever, like most everything else in Japan.

The tricky part was deciding which to choose and I settled on “Café de ham” which consisted of tiny toy sets of a hamster creating mischief in a diner. Here’s a shot of the capsule I randomly got and what was inside: tiny toy hamster, plate and little sandwich. You can nestle the hamster in the sandwich. You will likely either think this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard of or the cutest thing you’ve ever seen. Of course, for me, it was the later.

Enough for now.  I’m going off  to ruminate on the appeal of tiny toys. More soon. Sayonara!

Who Me, Worry? (Day 1 in Japan)

I take after my Daddy.

Which is to say I have the worry gene.

Which is also why becoming a programmer was a cinch for me. I learned from my first exercise in Comp Sci 16 that one had to consider the worst case.

Which I still do.

As you might imagine, the leadup to our May 14 departure for Japan was fraught with worries.

My gout toe hurt. What if I came down with another horrendous case of gout and it ruined everyone’s trip. (It didn’t.)

No seat assignment for our flight from JFK to Tokyo. What if we were delayed by going to the counter and missed our connection and took a day off of our trip? (We didn’t.)

My mom is decreasingly agile. What if she fell while we were away and we had to come back stat from trip? (She didn’t.) 

You get the idea.

Hidden among these worries was: What if we can’t find Zack, Nat and Lilly at the Narita Airport? It’s a big place. We don’t speak the language. What if…

But, once I got on our international flight, most of my worries died down, thanks to my mom’s optimism gene. But that last one continued to niggle.

When we landed, I immediately tried to connect to wifi (What if I couldn’t connect to wifi?) and was able to catch him on Skype right away. Nat and Lilly’s flight had just gotten in and they were delayed a bit going through customs in a different terminal. He would collect them and find us.  So we were told to sit down after we passed through immigration. Which we did. I held my breath.

And friends, we saw beautiful wonders of God and man during our 9 days in Japan. We saw skyscrapers that boggled the mind. We saw beautiful women in exquisite silk kimonos. We saw Mount Fuji mysteriously wreathed in a garland of clouds. But nothing, nothing, nothing compared to the sight of my younger son, followed closely by my older son and his wife in that airport. All smiling.  An amazing and cherished sight. I exhaled. At last.

Zack, Nat, and Lilly catching train at Narita Airport 

As to our first (half) day in Japan, I learned that some common preconceptions about the country were absolutely true. The subways were packed. Filled to the gills, mostly by Salarymen. (Salarymen wear suits, ties, white shirts, carry briefcases and are very loyal to and very serious about their jobs.) People did not talk OR make eye contact on the train. Zack had to shush us (mostly me) and remind us to respect their silence. Everyone had their cellphone out on the train. I’m not sure exactly what they were all doing, but they were definitely doing something enterprising. We were wedged in pretty tight, with our luggage. It was anonymous intimacy.  A New York pickpocket would have had a field day.

Tokyo Station 

We emerged from the subway about 2 blocks from our hotel which was across the street from Zack’s apartment. He helped us get checked in and carried my suitcase to our room; he had been kind enough to handle in on the train for me, too. As he helped me plug in my cellphone in our tiny hotel room, I saw a look of alarm cross his face. His briefcase! He had left it on the train! Our vacation was going to start off on the wrong foot. It would be ruined. (Well, even I knew that was hyperbole, but still, it really sucked!)

He dashed out and back to the train station. I thought to myself: he will NEVER see THAT briefcase again. Earle and I unpacked what we could in our shoebox of a room and waited to hear from him. Within 20 we received word via Skype that he had found his briefcase! He asked at the station and learned it was located two stops down. They held it for him and he was headed to collect it. In 20 more minutes he was back, triumphant! I was releaved! One more “what if” put to bed!

I later verified that what Zack told me years ago was true. He was much safer in Japan than in America. Our violent crime rate is 26 times higher than theirs. Our total crimes per 1000 people is 84 times higher than theirs!

In fact, their crime rate is so much lower than ours that their young children go to school by themselves! We saw it time and time again. Elementary students navigating the subway quite alone, relaxed and attentive to their location. In Tokyo, we saw a little girl in a busy business district by herself. She wore a yellow cap and a yellow sign across her backpack stating that she was on her school commute. She took her time, walking along an obviously familiar route. She looked about 6 years old! I don’t think I would have been more surprised by seeing Godzilla drinking a nightcap! 

After that I didn’t worry about our safety anymore. (That doesn’t include worrying about getting separated from my group, but more on that later! )

Upon Zack’s return to the hotel, we all went on walkabout to a delicious tempura restaurant, where I managed to feed myself, rice and all, with chopsticks. Afterwards, we returned to our rooms and fell into bed, too tired to worry about anything.