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I'm in the limo now. The driver just farted. I am pretending not to notice the smell of rotten eggs wafting into the back seat.

After a brief anxiety moment last night, I pulled myself together and got packed. I've flown something close to three quarters of a a million miles so far, much of that for business travel, so I am now an expert at packing light. In one large backpack, one regular backpack, a camera bag and the clothes I am wearing, I have managed to cram everything I need for a two week trip to Japan:

• passport
• two pair of climbing capris
• four t-shirts
• casual cargo pants
• one hiking skirt
• my mod dress
• stripey stockings
• five magazines
• two Japan guide books
• bionic woman knee brace
• scrambling shoes
• nice sandals
• hiking sandals
• two digital cameras with three SLR lenses and an iSight
• bathing suit
• toiletries, including five sets of contacts
• iBook with spare battery (thanks, Tim), ten ripped episodes of The Family Guy, and a set of ripped Thin Man DVDs
• fuly charged iPod with--check this shit--52GB of music and audiobooks
• awesome Trinity sunglasses, compliments of smart
• noise canceling headphones
• universal iBook power adapter to so I can run powered on the plane
• a variety of cables and adapters
• printed copies of all of my travel arrangements
• "travel drugs" - immodium, gravol, metamucil in caplets, diphenydramine, and two different decongestants. After my Barcelona/Paris experience, I'm not going through that again.

The Slackmistress is meeting me at LAX during my three hour layover. We are going to have a picnic in the terminal. How awesome is she?

Another painless airport experience, though my US citizenship and business class ticket contributed to that. Given how much I bad-mouth the US government and its idiot policies, I normally refuse to get privileged access through US border crossings with my US passport. The security guards, however, spotted the passport in my hand and forced me to the special line for US citizens, in which I had to wait an entire 30 seconds before getting My Very Own Immigration Guy. I feel dirty inside.

When he discovered that I am going to Japan for my holiday, the US Immigration official suggested that I climb Mt Fuji. I'm sure there's some Buddhist metaphor in there, but I'm in no position to meditate on it. Right now all I want to do is get on the airplane and sleep for five hours.

I was randomly (wink, wink) selected for a search, but the search wasn't very thorough. They didn't even bother to unpack my backpack or camera bag so it took, like, two minutes. Funny how I've been randomly selected on every trip to the US for the last four years, with the exception of my most awesome Atlanta trip this past weekend.

My only complaint so far: the wireless networks in range of my laptop are... other laptops. Even bankruptcy-protected Air Canada has free wireless in their terminal. Get with the program, people!

I've finished one Family Guy episode and a light breakfast. The flight attendant has done a super job of keeping up with my club soda addiction.

What an excellent nap. As soon as I awoke, the flight attendant was right here to offer me something to drink. I think he might be psychic.

I just met the Slackmistress. To answer my own question, she is FUCKING AWESOME.

Hey kids! It's The Slackmistress!

We talked, non-stop, for about 90 minutes, about relationships and friends and travel and LA and Toronto and family and fitness and decor and work and dogs and, well, all sorts of stuff. You know how when you meet somebody and like them immediately? Yeah. Totally. She is fucking awesome.

Also, we had mimosas for breakfast, so I was plenty tipsy by the time I was done.

I'd love to tell you more about the conversation, but it's chick stuff, you know. I will tell you that I'd move her and A. to Toronto if I could.

We said our goodbyes and I headed back to queue up for the security checkpoint. The poor guy in front of me in line managed to dump the contents of his briefcase all over the floor. As I helped him pick it up, he explained that his day was just getting worse: apparently he'd totaled the rental car this morning and the battery on his cell phone had died because he ran it out on the line with the insurance company. I hope he managed to make his plane and didn't slip and drown in the toilet or anything. We've all had those days.

Business class is rockin' the mic. I had a most excellent filet mignon lunch and have watched part of The Longest Yard on my personal LCD screen. I've also taken two naps and watched UFC 54, which has some of the most awesome ass whuppings I've yet seen in the UFC.

According to the flight map, it's another 4:16 to Tokyo. I think I can kill time with a Thin Man film or two.

I've arrived after more than 24 hours of travel. Arrival at Narita was quite painless: for a huge airport, they run things pretty well. I caught the Express train to Tokyo and then one of the local trains to the station where they told me to go for the hotel... except when I got out of the station, the hotel was nowhere to be seen. I asked around but nobody spoke English, so I wandered about until I ran into a white person: a Welshman named Richard who works as a translator and has been living in Japan for 18 years. He rung the hotel for me and found where the shuttle was supposed to pick me up (they neglected to mention the shuttle when I reserved the room), and stood and waited with me at the station until the shuttle bus arrived.

Remote control for the
toilet. Seriously.

My toilet has a remote control. There is a remote control for the bidet part of it, at least. And the flushing lever isn't attached to the toilet: it's below the sink, so it took me, like, two minutes to find out how to flush it.

I considered going out and seeing what Tokyo has to offer tonight, but the "oh my god I just want to relax" impulse has taken over. I'm going to order room service and go to bed at 11pm.

There is a sign at a salon down the street for eyeblow waxing.

The Japanese are SO FUCKING POLITE. It's really unbelievable. Look, I'm a Southerner who has lived for the last five years in Canada, so I know from polite. And let me tell you, they out-polite any North American politeness I've ever seen. In the hotel, as I walk by the staff, they bow. Every one of them, in a big long line, like some hospitality version of being in a baseball stadium and doing The Wave.

Front desk? Polite. "Thank you, enjoy your stay."

Concierge? Polite. "Enjoy your stay. Thank you for staying. Bye bye."

Room service on the phone? Polite. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, bye bye."

Room service dude? Polite. "I'm sorry, thank you, bye."

The bowing is contagious, too. I've been here for four hours and I'm already doing it. They bow, you bow. Which makes them bow again. And then you bow again. This can go on for hours. I'm still bowing to the woman at the Japan Rail counter and I haven't seen her since 6pm. I'll bet you she's still bowing, too.

It's 4am in Tokyo. Can't sleep. I will share an Instant Messenger conversation with you instead.

Angie says: (2:58:17 PM)
well that just makes you an early riser
Angie says: (2:58:21 PM)
why don't you go beat the crowds at some shinto temple or something?
alaina says: (2:58:32 PM)
like, literally beat them?
alaina says: (2:58:41 PM)
those poor defenseless shinto pilgrims
Angie says: (2:58:46 PM)
yeah, with your whip and hooker boots
Angie says: (2:58:55 PM)
defenseless fuckers
alaina says: (2:58:58 PM)
I AM FROM CANADA! I COME IN PEACE!

I'm just now back from my walking tour of Tokyo. I got room service again. An enthusiastic bowing battle ensued as she was leaving the room, because she stood in the foyer, thought for a moment, bowed, and said, very carefully, "I hope that today will be very wonderful for you." She bowed, so I bowed, and then she bowed again, and I bowed, and she topped it off with a series of bows as she backed out of the room, like a Weeble Wobble on a conveyor belt. I've never seen anything like it.

Goofy the Construction
Helper

I started this morning at the ungodly hour of 4am, after a whole six hours of sleep, because my stupid jetlagged brain just doesn't get that it's supposed to be adjusting to the local time. I spent a fair bit of time farting around online, waiting for the hotel restaurants to open. Around 6am I hopped in the shower, and I headed downstairs at 7am to feed my face. First, though, I took a stroll through the Miyako's Japanese garden.

Large-scale Japanese gardens really are unbelievably beautiful. Rather than the manicured approach of, say, English gardening, the Japanese are all about the natural look. They don't bother to pick up fallen trees or branches, or even to trim the bushes neatly. Everything just sort of grows as it will, and the stuff that is placed there by humans is done in such a way that it looks like part of the landscape. There are little foot paths all through the garden, often leading to bridges overlooking water features. At 7am the area is just starting to wake up, so I spent a lot of peaceful time just sitting and watching the ducks in the pond.

The hotel has something like six restaurants, including a fancy Chinese place that was serving a buffet breakfast. My breakfast consisted mostly of sliced fruits: papaya, mango, pineapple, honeydew. I did take a bowl of some rather flavourless paste (it actually wasn't bad), and I also grabbed two pieces of dim sum and dipped them in the hottest mustard I've ever tasted. Holy shit. But hey, it was tasty, and it's probably what I'll do for breakfast tomorrow, too.

The concierge helped me find the train schedules for my trip to Minakami tomorrow, and the trip from Minakami to Kyoto on Tuesday. After taking care of that, I took a stroll along Meguro dori toward the station, stopping at the National Park for Nature Study. This place wasn't so much a garden as a nature preserve. They only let 300 people on the grounds at any given time, meaning that it is never crowded at all.

National Park for Nature
Study

The concierge was kind enough to give me detailed directions and train schedules, so I presented them to the guy at the JR ticket counter who reserved my seats for me. We communicated only through pointing and saying "hai", except for the excessive bowing that was made all the more impressive by the fact that he was seated.

Taking Jeff's suggestion, I wanted to head to Asakusa and see the temple. It took me a good ten minutes to figure out that there are actually two different subway systems: the JR Yamanote line that encircles downtown Tokyo, and the rest of the Tokyo Metro system. A ticket on one does not work on the other. Once I grokked that (and survived the local train that emptied at one station while I sat there totally oblivious, eventually figuring out that it was a local before getting kicked off of the train by a white-gloved conductor), I took the subway all the way up to Asakusa and walked to the Senso-ji temple.

Market at Senso-ji

Right now I am going to take a nap and prepare for my trip to see the Japanese boxing ch1x0rz. I'll probably dine in the upscale Japanese restaurant downstairs: part of me wants to try street yakisoba or tempura, but then I remember that I don't eat food from street vendors in Toronto, either, so why should I do it here just because it's Tokyo?

Most charming thing so far? The guy with the trucker hat that said, in English, "I ♥ intercourse".

Oops. I overslept. Shit. (What is Japanese for "shit"?)

I've re-booked the end of my trip, though. I'll spend my last day/night in Tokyo, not Osaka, so I'll get to meet the boxers then.

It's 11:30pm. I have returned from a tasty five course Japanese meal, delivered by the bowing-est woman yet, and a meditative half an hour spent in the garden behind the hotel watching the ducks snuggle up to each other and sleep. They tuck their heads under their wings while sleeping, which is funny if you translate that to human anatomy and imagine us snoozing with our noses shoved into our armpits.

Right now I am sitting in my complimentary yukata (a light cotton robe) and enjoying my $3.50 bottle of Perrier. I get to hop on the Shinkansen (bullet train) tomorrow, departing Tokyo station at 10:12am. I should get some sleep because I'll be mountain biking in the afternoon.

Tokyo Subway

Oyasuminasai, y'all.

Greck has told me how to say "shit" and "dammit". He's my Japanese expert.

greck says: (3:01:55 PM)
any language that has a special past tense that implicates the speaker as having done something kinda wrong that they're sorry about is cool with me

Jari just sent me a link to how-to-bow.com, which explains... how to bow. It looks like the Japanese style of interaction is quite complicated, esepcially for a North American, so I'm wondering how much I have done that has been horribly offensive. They seem to be quite forgiving of foreigners, though, at least outside of the business setting.

I did wonder why I was the only one wearing sandals and nail polish. Apparently it's verboten. All of the other Japanese women are wearing close-toed shoes, which is a bit of a style-cramper for me because I brought one pair of dressy sandals, one pair of hiking sandals and only one pair of actual shoes. I noticed people on the subway staring at my feet. I was thinking, "why yes, I do have a very nice pedicure". Now I realize that they were thinking "dear God, woman, what the hell are you thinking?"

One thing that strikes me is how women interact with men. I was sitting at the concierge's desk yesterday while she was helping me book my reserved train seats. She was interacting with me normally--even the bowing was kept to a minimum--but at one point a Japanese man walked by and asked her a question. Her voice went up in pitch noticeably as she talked to him--so high that it was difficult to even make out the words she was using--and she covered her mouth and giggled. Then, when he went away, she started speaking to me in her regular voice. Weird.

Japanese men must think that tough, confident women are the devil. I briefly considered falling into that role and doing all of the stuff that men expect, but a gendered hierarchy is one system I am unwilling to participate in. I will be polite, I will bow, I will come to my answers by a circuitous route, and I will respect age and status, but I'm not going to let a guy think he is superior to me because I am a chick. It will be interesting to see if the boxers are any different than most women.

I'll be leaving around 9am to catch the train to Minakami. Today we'll be doing mountain biking, and I'll be meeting up with a bunch of other gaijin. Half of me wants to be the lone Canadian because it will explain why I am the quiet and polite English speaker, and half of me is desperate to meet somebody else from Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver so that we can be Canadian urbanites together. I have a mental image of meeting up with a bunch of drunken Aussies or Americans, which will be fun at the very least.

I have been doing well on this trip with talking to strangers. I've made a real effort over the last couple of weeks, and it's going great. (The Slackmistress doesn't count, because in addition to being awesome I've already known her for several years and we ended up talking like we had been friends for ages.) I had a four hour chat with my seat mate on the way from LAX to Narita (nice guy, I freaked him out with the lesbian thing, though). I met the translator guy when I got here, too. So, really, the ideal companions on this adventure tour would be a bunch of loud and outgoing people.

I'm going to run a bath and then head downstairs for the Chinese breakfast buffet! Oh, sliced mango and papaya, how I long for you.

That's it! I'm off to the train station.

I have just left Takasaki Station on the limited express to Minakami. The Shinkansen trip from Tokyo to Takasaki was underwhelming: it was fast, but not hauling-ass fast, which is what I was expecting from the bullet train. Hopefully I won't be disappointed on the Nozomi trip from Tokyo to Kyoto next week.

There's a rowdy bunch of guys on the train. There must be a dozen or more of them, all seated together, and having the best time laughing and joking. I have no idea what they're saying but it sure sounds fun.

A few observations about Tokyo:

More than any place I've been before, Tokyo is a vertical city. I mean, most major urban centres have tall buildings. In North American cities, for the most part, stores and restaurants are on the ground floor, maybe some on the second floor. In Tokyo, they're so cram packed in together that you frequently see four to ten story buildings with a different business on each floor. The sign on the building facade is also vertical, and shows you the name of each business along with the floor on which it's located. The ground floor might be a supermarket, the next floor a drug store, the third floor a McDonald's, the fourth floor an Indian restaurant, and the fifth floor a sporting goods shop. I have a feeling that this is how Coruscant got started.

(Do you like how I got the Star Wars reference in there?)

The weather, though, has been obligingly pleasant, if a bit humid: sunny with high temperatures in the mid-20s. I've noticed that almost nobody wears sunglasses, choosing instead to carry umbrellas to shield them from the sun. I see this in Chinatown in Toronto, but here's a city full of people who do it. I feel especially like Trinity in my mirrored shades: a tall white woman striding purposefully through the streets. I'm not dressed in PVC, though. Thank god.

Mom and child, Tokyo

Now, you might get the impression that life in Tokyo is computerized and automated. Not true. They do have ticket takers at the train stations (who direct you to use the automated ticket gates and vending machines, so I'm not entirely sure what purpose the humans serve there), but they also have white-gloved attendants on the platforms to point you where you need to go. There are policemen (I've yet to see a policewoman) in the stations, but they're not wandering about: they are perched stolidly on foot-high wooden boxes painted blue, staring straight into space, presumably waiting for someone to break a law. Which, by the way, nobody does. Many of them run from place to place, though: you can't spend 30 seconds in a train station without somebody sprinting by. I can't tell if they're just in a hurry or if they are an habitually late people who feel guilty about it.

Except for the national sport, which is pushing and shoving other people on crowded trains, Tokyo residents are remarkably orderly. Their willingness to stand obligingly in queues rivals even the Canadian devotion to waiting in line, except the Japanese do it quietly while Canadians sigh exasperatedly and complain quietly, ensuring that nobody in a position of authority can hear them.

Gunma from the train

I'm interested to see how different Minakami is going to be. In about an hour I should be getting set up for mountain biking. I have my knee brace. Wish me luck.

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