Today did not start out that well for me. I slept OK but I woke up several times with cramps and each time they got worse. Twice in one foot and once in the other plus both thighs. Each was a separate incident and each woke me up. The thigh cramps were the worst. I still felt OK when I got up.

Breakfast wasn’t so bad. It was at the coffee shop downstairs and we got to pick one of the morning sets. I got there before they opened and waited. I think one of the people was fairly new. I got the scrambled eggs and it came with salad, toast, and coffee.

I’m not sure if I saved any money paying for it with the hotel but the cost wasn’t very different.

After that it was off to Tokyo station to get my East Tohoku Area pass. It’s pretty cheap for five days of travel in Tohoku. Because of the pandemic, most of the travel offices don’t open until 10AM and the one in Tokyo Station is the only one I found that opens earlier, at 8AM.

Actually, that early the trains weren’t that crowded. I think everyone gets to the office around 9AM.

The next stop was the post office to mail the seven packages my sister gave me. The post office at Narita used to be the easiest to deal with. They were familiar with foreign tourists and would take all sorts of nonsense in the to and from address fields. I had to go to a regular post office and hoped they’d be just as forgiving but no such luck. I had to deal with Japanese bureaucracy.

The first step was to try to sign up for the Japanese app so I could fill the addresses in by copying and pasting. That took an HOUR with all sorts of complicated Japanese and none of the fields would let me copy them into Google Translate. After I finally signed up we found out that they only took Japanese credit cards and my usual workaround, to use American Express, didn’t work because they didn’t take American Express at all. So it was back to filling out the forms by hand. Then I realized that my eyesight has gotten so bad that I can’t see all the strokes in the tiny kanji characters on my iPhone, and I also couldn’t figure out how to get the magnifier setting to work. Since I haven’t had to write any kanji since I left Japan in 1991, I can’t remember how to write hardly any of them. I finally got them to let me write it all in hiragana, which is phonetic. I’m sure my cousin is going to let me have it about that. Anyway, that took another hour and a half. So that’s two and half hours I’ll never get back. Good thing the woman at the travel bureau convinced me not to buy the ticket until I got out of the post office.

Anyway, I planned to take the 10AM train but ended up on the 12PM train to Mito. I knew lunch could be difficult that late (a lot of restaurants close between lunch and dinner here) so I got an ekiben. Not only that, but I got one of the “limited edition” ekiben which was Japanese fried chicken. It helped a bit with my headache.

I got to Mito around 1PM and was confused about how to get to my hotel. Then I realized it was part of the huge building that was the train station.

I dropped off my bags and headed for the tourist information center and then went on the walk they suggested. First was down the river to the lake.

And then it was up a hill to the famous garden. I am my father’s son after all.

There was a cedar forest and a bunch of cherry trees (way out of season for cherry blossoms). Then I headed for a big main street for a different route back to the station. The first thing I headed towards was the art tower and I’m not sure of its purpose.

I also saw quite a few interesting stores, including a vacuum tube radio store for audio snobs and a giant department store. I also noticed there’s a lot of kids around. Later in the day the crowds at the station were pretty big, but even thought its Monday I guess it’s Halloween. Less than a quarter of the kids were wearing costumes and there were a LOT of kids out.

I did head out for dinner and the guy at the front desk told me I should have ankou (monkfish). The other specialty of the area is natto. I went to an izakaya which is dangerous because I never make it out of one for less than ¥5000. I guess I was just under today. That used to be $50 but with the weak yen it’s more like $32.

I even had a coupon for a free beer.

Then I had tempura of natto wrapped in shiso leaves. Actually I had it twice because it was so good.

Then I ordered the ankou, which is a monkfish hot pot.

I googled monkfish and people call it poor man’s lobster. I found it rubbery like poorly prepared lobster. It’s also quite bony.

So for round two I got the second order of the tempura and also anko karaage because I wondered if some of the rubberiness was because I overcooked it in the hot pot.

It was still a little rubbery at times but much better. You can tell I liked it because I’ve already eaten 4 of 6 before I remembered to take this picture.

I made my way through the crowd of kids and got back to the hotel. And now I’m about to pass out. At least it’s closer to 9:30pm, a normal-ish time to go to bed. Tomorrow I’m off to Utsunomiya. I wonder what I’ll find there. I also wonder how loud it will be tonight. I hear a lot of hooting along with trains and loud exhausts.

Well, I made it Japan for the first time in three years. They finally opened the borders for non-Japanese travelers. Unfortunately, some of the conveniences aren’t back and I had to travel through Seattle instead of getting a direct flight from Portland. That meant I had to get up at 4AM and right now I’ve been up for 23½ hours after a restless night of sleep.

It took me a bit to get going and to find an Uber at 4:30AM (the only one available was in Vancouver), but I made it with plenty of time to spare. The weird thing is that the TSA PreCheck line only had 13 people ahead of me while the regular checkin line looked like it had at least 300 people in it. It wound around two separate rooms. When I got in, I went to the Delta SkyClub and had some breakfast.

Then it was a quick flight to Seattle and we arrived so early that we had to sit on an active taxiway for a while. I had hours to wait in Seattle, so I signed up for Clear and checked out two different lounges, Delta’s and the Priority Plus lounge. Then it was a ten hour flight on an Airbus. The movies seemed older, but I found a few I hadn’t seen yet. Spiderman: No Way Home, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The flight was pretty uneventful, but I made the mistake of drinking lots of coffee to stay awake and it kind of bothered my stomach. I felt a little queasy on landing, and then the crazy taxi ride to my hotel made me feel a little carsick. Oh, the airport post offices used to be open on the weekends but now they’re only open regular post office hours (M-F 9-5). I found that out after taking a bus between terminals and hauling my suitcase and a heavy duffel bag full of presents around. Oh even after walking what seemed like a mile, I breezed through immigrations and had to wait for a long time for my bags.

Anyway, I made it my hotel and sat around for a bit.

Then it was dinnertime. My stomach still didn’t feel great, and I didn’t feel like a 40 minute trip to my favorite brewery, so I asked the front desk where to go. They suggested Ameyoko which looked far on the map but turned out just to be around the corner.

I kind of did what I thought I’d do, which is walking around for an hour and then just eating at the cafe on the first floor of the hotel. I asked what was good and I got the katsu curry with extra rice. It wasn’t big but it was tasty. I sure missed eating Japanese food in Japan.

I wanted something fizzy to drink so I had a nice lemon squash and it was tasty as well.

In any case, I’m trying to stay up because going bed at 7PM would mean I wake up ridiculously early and who needs that?