To the veterans, thank you for your service.

So, after I went and stayed up for, what, 32 hours, diid I go to sleep at a reasonable hour? I’m assuming reasonable would have been more than eight hours of sleep (more like the 13 1/2 hours my sister got) so no, I did not. And it doesn’t look like I’m going to be sensible today, either. I even went to the gym today after feeling quite sleepy in the afternoon. I was the worst off before lunch and on the drive home. I still was sleepy right before I left for the gym. Fortunately, we didn’t do anything too difficult, so I could sleepwalk through the parts that weren’t dangerous.

Earlier I was thinking one of the things I won’t miss is the hotel toilet paper. I even had an encounter in Narita Airport with the dreaded Japanese-style toilet that requires all the squatting and the balance. Good thing I go to a gym where they make me do a lot of squats and it didn’t turn out to be a disaster. Funny how that’s the most useful thing I can think of that I got from working out so much.

Right now it’s 2PM in Osaka and I’ve been up since 7AM yesterday. It’s all a part of trying to limit my jet lag and sometimes it works. Usually I’m a zombie by this time at night (it’s 9PM here at home). Got up in Tokyo, ate a morning set and did some shopping in Shinjuku before my sister and I took the Narita Express for the airport. Narita Airport is actually kind of fun as long as you don’t make the mistake I did a few years back and go through the security gate too quickly. A CD store, a Uniqlo, a selection of restaurants, a few gift shops, and there’s even a gift shop that has a selection of Kit Kat flavors that I haven’t seen anywhere else. Kind of a fun sendoff from Japan.

Tokyo was fun and aggravating at the same time. Loud at night with sirens and trucks and the air didn’t need cigarette smoke to make it dirty.

Today was our last full day in Japan, and the only full day we had in Tokyo. I spent the morning shopping with my sister at some athletic stores. For lunch we went on our pilgrimage to Mos Burger.

After lunch we split up because my sister’s further pilgrimage was to the giant fabric store in Shinjuku and mine was to Akihabara’s Denden Town. Oh, the sights I saw! There was even a store selling UV-erasable EPROMs, something that the newly graduated engineers were shaking their heads in disbelief about when I told them of their existence. Lots of cool stuff but I only bought a few presents and I went back to the hotel.

Today I had dinner with Suzuki-san, a co-worker I hadn’t seen for 19 years. We went to one of those restaurants in Shinjuku that the barkers try to get you into. 2 hours, all you can drink for ¥1750, plus food ended up as ¥8000 for the both of us. Not so bad. We caught up on old times and wondered why we both looked pretty much the same as the last time we saw each other.

Anyway, that’s it for my gluttony. Tomorrow we head back for the US!

I’ll try to make this short. My sister got sick from the cigarette smoke at dinner, but I think she’s also tired from traveling.

We left Okayama at 10:26 and arrived in Tokyo around 14:40. We met the designers Chico Hayasaki and Hiron for dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant, but spent the afternoon wandering around bits of Shinjuku, mainly Tokyu Hands and Yodobashi Camera. I went back to Yodobashi Camera with Hiron and Chico after my sister got sick so we could geek out for a while.

So basically, a short answer to a long day. Tomorrow I make my pilgrimage to Akihabara and see my old co-worker Suzuki-san. You know how it is.

Today was our only full day in Okayama, and it was a doozy. My sister’s friend Yumi drove us around all day. First it was to see some of my sister’s old co-workers. Then it was to Shikoku to have incredibly tasty udon and see Ritsurin Garden. Then it was around Okayama to go shopping and to a massage and dinner. Quite a full day.

The Sanuki udon was tasty and quite cheap if you don’t count the highway costs. I think it was probably ¥8000 to get there and back across the Seto Ohashi, but it was less than ¥2000 for our lunch. Even cheaper than our sushi yesterday!

I should have pictures of Ritsurin Garden which is the largest “cultural heritage garden” in Japan, but I didn’t even crop the udon picture because it’s getting close to midnight. It was quite nice, actually, and I’ll eventually have pictures.

After all that, we went to have some traditional Japanese sweets.

We were joking that my sister was going to die if we didn’t get to some shopping, so we did go to several places. Counterintuitively, she didn’t get anything and the one who was complaining (me) bought a Nike toque and a North Face jacket, both in colors I don’t expect to find in the US. We also had Japanese massages which were inexpensive but involved putting on sweats and being massaged through a towel. Whatever. It was still relaxing.

I keep saying I need to get to sleep because we’re off to Tokyo tomorrow!

We took the Shinkansen to Okayama today, where my sister worked for a year. It’s kind of an odd place, in the middle of nowhere, but seems to have plenty of tourists. We met my sister’s friend Yumi, who drove us around for a long day of shopping and sightseeing. We had lunch at an old school shopping area that supplies fish and produce and even flowers for the area. This sushi donburi only cost ¥1000, for example, which is half of what I’d expect it to cost anywhere else. And it was incredibly fresh and tasty. Probably better than most expensive sushi restaurants.

Dinner was at a tonkatsu restaurant and the reviews were mixed. I thought it was great and my mom thought it was so-so. My pork was incredibly tender and the tsukemono (Japanese pickles) were especially good. The only thing that could have used improvement was the miso soup.

In any case, we’re off to get udon tomorrow and I’ve heard so many stories of the udon in Kagawa Prefecture that I wonder if it will measure up to the hype. We’ll see!

My sister was hoping we wouldn’t have to spend all day with the relatives, but I knew that’s what we were in store for. It’s not that bad, especially since the oldest cousin, Kyoko, is such a crack-up. From the left, there’s Kimikazu, the oldest male cousin (Kyoko’s younger brother), Kyoko, Miyaka and her kid (Kimikazu’s daughter), and Ikuko (Kimikazu’s wife).

Kimikazu is the cousin I was avoiding for all those years because I knew he’d have something to say about my lack of job, or not being married, or something else only a cousin can give you grief about. But like I said, he’s a bit of a drinker and his grandkids keep arriving less than 9 months after his kids’ marriages, so I’m not so worried about what he has to say any more. He’s a good guy, really, but does give me more grief than most of my relatives.

Here’s a picture of my mom, my aunt, and my uncle. My uncle is the oldest of the three, and there seems to be a lot more Tamuras around. No more Fujitas (my aunt only had a daughter) and no more Fujinakas thanks to me and my sister. This next picture doesn’t prove any of that since Miyaka is no longer a Tamura (and while she looks twelve she’s in her mid-twenties) and Yasuko (Kyoko’s daughter-in-law) is a Hashimoto. I can’t remember what the kids names are. I’m not even sure that Yasuko is really Kyoko’s daughter-in-law’s name.

Well, enough of the family. More pictures of food. I forgot to take pictures at lunch. We went to a shopping center I never knew existed, since the last time I was in Nishinomiya Kitaguchi there was a baseball stadium there. It’s pretty fancy and I wondered where all the rich people came from and I found out they were all from further north towards Takarazuka or towards Ashiya, not near the station. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that we went to a pretty darn nice mall and had a great Japanese lunch today.

After doing the family thing, we came back to Umeda and went to an even nicer mall (I keep thinking they’re going to kick my ass out for being so darn poor) with a Gucci store, a Swarovski store, etc, so we could find the shop that had mugs designed by my sister’s old high school friend Chico Hayasaki. We made it in and out without getting thrown out.

Dinner was in the Acty Building (Daimaru Umeda, I think) where there used to be two floors of restaurants including Chico’s and Charlie’s where we had the only Mexican food we could find in Japan. The floor with C&C is now missing and the lower floor is quite different. I voted to have dinner in a place that mainly had cakes and waffles and I made the right choice. The beef stew (in a set with coffee and cake plus sandwiches) was tasty and my sister and I both had it.

My mom and my aunt split an omurice gratin (omlette with fried rice inside, covered with cheese and baked) which was tasty as well.

On the way home I decided to try the ¥1000 haircut place (haircuts here usually cost twice as much and include a post-haircut shampoo and a straight razor shave). ¥1000 and 10min/haircut is what they say. It took me a while to make it through the line, but it wasn’t so bad. But really, I just get it cut the same length all over, so how bad could it be? I just was a little off in my conversion from US measure to the metric measure they use for hair length.

Cheers!

Today we went to see a couple of bunraku plays. It’s traditional Japanese puppetry and I figured it was time for me to be more adult and see some more cultural things. Actually, I thought it might be fun, and it was thought it was pretty long. There were two plays with an intermission in between and both plays were in two acts. There really only was time to get up during the intermission, and most people broke out traditional Japanese bentos and ate in their seats. What I’m trying to get to is that I had to sit in a short Japanese theatre seat for four and a half hours listening to shamisen music and a single narrator chanting and my ass got pretty tired. But it was pretty interesting.

Afterwards we met my not-really-my-aunt for a snack and continued on to dinner with her. Here’s the snack, a Japanese parfait at the same store we went to yesterday.

I had a steak, pork, and chicken dinner and I figured that the steak would be tough and the chicken pretty tender. Surprisingly, the beef was the most tender and the chicken was pretty tough. It was all tasty.

Here’s my sister and my not-really-my-aunt.

And my mom (on the left) and her older sister.

My aunt doesn’t eat much, so she and my mom split dinner and I still ended up with some of their food.

We made it back to the hotel at 7PM and I’ve been sitting around watching Japanese TV because I’m beat. Something that’s often on Japanese TV is reruns of Columbo and guess who is hooked on Columbo?

Today was a random adventure in Kobe, started mainly because my sister wanted to go shopping at some random and small fabric store. After that we went wandering around Sannomiya, where I had odd flashbacks of a place I hadn’t been for 20 years. When I was in Japan I had a recurring dream about going to Powell’s Books in Portland and never quite making it. After moving back to the U.S., I’ve had a recurring dream of going to Sannomiya but never making it. So it was all a bit surreal.

This is what a $6.20 cup of coffee looks like:

I even bought a new man-purse at a bag shop I went to probably 25 years ago. I can’t remember what bag I bought back then.

We got back and I had enough time to see my aunt before I left for dinner with an old friend from my old Mitsubishi Electric days. We now see each other once every year. It’s weird how much things have changed for him lately: a long 3-year divorce proceeding and then he’s engaged to be married again already, building a new house for his combined family (2 of her kids and one of his). I wonder if I should have taken pictures of the okonomiyaki we had tonight, but I think the pictures from Day 1 are enough.

Today was another travel day, but the travel from Toyama to Osaka isn’t that bad. And traveling on a train is a lot more relaxing than traveling on an airplane, especially if the train isn’t that crowded. You just kind of roll your bags onto the train and then sit around without worrying about seatbelts or being stuck in your seat. It’s harder to go to the bathroom because it seems to sway more, but other than that it’s a lot easier. Often the scenery is better, too, unless you’re taking the Shinkansen and you’re stuck in tunnels. The train ride is only about three hours as well. The worst part of it all was having my mom obsess about taking the elevator in the train stations. At some point I gave up and took two heavy suitcases as I abandoned my mother and sister and told them I’d meet them at the hotel. I actually beat them there but I used to live here.

Once we got to Osaka we did a bit of shopping. I wish I could say my sister did a lot more than I, but I bought twice as many t-shirts and almost as many cameras (1 vs 2). It was a compromise of sorts: I told my mom what I really wanted was a Grand Seiko Kinetic Spring Drive watch, but I was going to wait until I was rich and famous to do that because those watches are $4000 – $6000. At least the ones I like are that expensive. The Seiko I bought a couple of years ago for a couple hundred bucks is fine, really, but a guy can dream can’t he? The only jewelry an average guy wears is his watch and (possibly) his wedding ring.

I think I’ve said this before but I think I’m getting old because I’m developing a taste for Japanese desserts. My mom’s wasn’t nearly as sweet as mine.

Matcha with mochi balls.

Anyway, I’ll let you know how the new cameras work once they’re charged and operational. My sister and I have almost exactly the same Panasonic Lumix GF1. Hers is silver, though, and mine is dark red. See ya.

Yesterday we went to another hot spring, up in the hills, and it was pretty deserted. I was told it wasn’t that popular, but I think I liked it just as much as the other one. The view from the outdoor pool wasn’t as good, but the soaking pools were better. I was told it’s cleaner because they get more traffic. My mom ended up with a slight fever and we were worried she was getting sick, but she seems fine today.

And I finished two more books on my Kindle. That’s three during the trip, I think, Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan, Crashers by Dana Haynes, and 61 Hours by Lee Child. That still doesn’t put a big dent in my pile but at least I’m making my way through them.