I suppose I wasn’t entirely finished talking about Akihabara. Well, ok, no, obviously I WAS done- but now I’m not! To get you back into the spirit of reading about it- here’s a picture of a picture of the pictures that maids working at the maid cafes handed to us of themselves. I took their requests for “NO PICTURES PLEASE THANK YOU” seriously.



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Good lord, this post is long. I am so sorry! I’ll finish here and then do the wrapping up- journey back home-in a much much much smaller post later.










 

UENO AND AKIHABARA, JAPAN. MAY 17^th
Well, I let a few days pass since the last time I updated and I’m sort of kicking myself for that. I had to wait that long to be ABLE to kick myself about it because a few days of not walking around everywhere reminded my legs that they were supposed to be in horrible, cramping agony. While I was thinking “Now that I’m home, what should I do? Oh, I know. Sleep all the time” my legs were thinking “Well, now that WE’RE home what do we do? Oh, I know. Hurt all the time!” So thank you for that, legs.

When I was awake I spent time hanging out with friends and telling them all the things that I already told this journal and giving them journal spoilers. ^_^; That was a mistake if I want them to read this long wall of text, I think.

Also, for some reason, I've having difficulty getting pictures off my phone. I'll try to fix that. Until then you mostly get a high res picture of monkey balls. LUCKY YOU.

PART 1- X IS “HARDER THAN I THOUGHT”

Before I went to bed that night I came out of the bathroom at one point (after using another one of the bidet options because while I was in Japan I was going to try out every button on every damn thing I could- it never stopped freaking me out and making me laugh nervously simultaneously) and Tracy and Eel were collapsed on the bed. Tracy was facing the wrong way on the bed, her feet propped up by pillows and her head propped up by her arm. Eel was sprawled out entirely over the tiny (but incredibly comfortable) bed that we shared. I guess their Japanese culture and language integration had been more speedy and successful than my own because they were watching a show on the television on how to speak English. I assume they forgot how and needed a reminder.  An insane man who I think was supposed to be a representative of America and who was wearing very heavy, dark black eye makeup and a tiny, constantly grinning Japanese woman were teaching us the phrases “~Harder than I thought” and “~Easier than I thought”. I wish I could denote exactly how they were saying this so that it could get stuck in your head, like it got stuck in mine, like an infectious Katy Perry song. Oh. Actually I could try- since I’m a linguist and all… but I’m not sure anyone would appreciate it much.

At any rate the girl got on a horse and pouted dramatically and over-enthusiastically as she told us that “Riding a horse is HARDER than I THOUGHT”. I think she was lying though because the energy she put into telling us that and flailing wildly on the horse to express her inability to ride it should have made her fall off the horse. But she stayed on like a champ! Later in the lesson she got better as she told the horse to “Now go RIGHT” and “Now go LEFT” and it did so. At that point she alerted us that “Riding a horse is EASIER than I THOUGHT”. They learn to ride horses differently in Japan. I remember taking lessons and begging my horse to go right or left and it just stubbornly standing there. Apparently my fail horse wanted me to do something with the reins. Hers was just all “Oh. You told me to move? K”. Japanese programs on learning English are fantastic. Even horses can learn!

After that I pushed and punched Eel to get him to make enough room for me on the bed. It was harder than I thought.

PART 2- SUICA SUCKERS

There is one train line in Tokyo that I love above all others. That is because it is really simple. It goes in a loop around some of the most famous places in Tokyo. Also, a villain causes an earthquake to destroy it entirely in one of my favorite manga series ever! SWEET. It’s called the Yamanote line (“Yah-mah-noh-tay” not “Yeah-muh-noht” no matter how much fun it is to say that in a fake hickish accent and say “On o’er thatta way by ye ole yamanote”). Here’s a picture of the Tokyo transportation system that we had to figure out.

HAHAHAHA. Isn’t that amazing? Don’t your eyes go like this: O_O;;? If they don’t, don’t tell me. My eyes did that the whole time I was in Tokyo. I’m pretty sure that’s why Japanese cartoon characters look that way. They have all had to gaze upon the Tokyo train maps.


Anyway, that nifty green line in the middle there that makes a wobbly diamond/ squishy square (technical terms) is the Yamanote line. Theoretically, you just hop on that all easy peasy one two threesy (…I am using that phrase again. What is going on?) and you get to those awesome places you want to go. Ikebukoro, Shibuya, Ueno, Akihabara- these are all famous places you can travel to on the Yamanote line. And as an added bonus if you want to get to Tokyo Tower you just….

I have no unearthly clue how you get to Tokyo Tower. It’s a cruel joke! All the famous places are on the Yamanote Line except for THE famous place which is waaaaay off it and seems to require taking multiple trains and buses by my reckoning. Or a specific subway train that  we couldn’t figure out because taking a REGULAR train was already far too hard for our simple American minds. So we never went to Tokyo Tower on this trip because it was too hard to get there. I think it must have been on the Yamanote line at one point but then some brilliant Japanese scientist said “Do you realize that in every form of media featuring Tokyo this tower gets blown up? Maybe let’s not put it on the Yamanote line? It’s too easy for villains to get to then. And anyway I just read this really rad manga where this one dude with spiky hair caused an earthquake to destroy the entire Yamanote line so… maybe no. No, thank you. No. Thank you.” So we visited after that and didn’t get to see Tokyo Tower. I did see post cards of it though so that’s something (that’s right. Going to a country to see a postcard of their famous landmark is totally the same thing).

At any rate, it seemed to me that it would be easy enough to get to Ueno and Akihabara with our limited time by just taking that one train. One. Train. EASY. EAAAASY.

It was harder than I thought.

We got to Shinjuku Station and pointed at the big train map and said “There. The Yamanote Line.” and then we stood there. Then we said it again as though we expected that to have a different result. “The Yamanote Line!”, we declared with enthusiasm, “There it is! Right there on the wall!” Strangely, the result was the same. We continued to be standing in the middle of an incredibly busy train station- a line of ticket machines before us that we couldn’t quite understand. Bravely, we walked forward to one and pushed the English option. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t American English because it didn’t make any sense. I could clearly see that there were words on the screen that came from my language’s dictionary- but trying to figure out what it was telling us to do was nearly impossible. We wanted to get on the Yamanote line! To Ueno! Come ooooooooon.
Then we realized it wanted us to put in our ticket or card.

“…We don’t have one! Isn’t that what you do!?” we demanded of the machine.

“No. No, thank you.” It said back.

The train stations in Japan are really really really big and they require a bit of explanation to realize how stupidly hard it was to navigate for us (and how easy it is to navigate for brighter folk). In a Japanese train station you buy a ticket (NO WAAAY) and you feed that ticket to a toll booth (that may or may not also eat your small, delicate hands) to get INTO the station to ride a train and then you feed it to another toll booth to get OUT. There are also loads and loads of gates and entrances to get into the station- sprawling across all sides of the road. So you feel lost getting there and when you get there you think “Am I in the wrong side?” and then you look at the Tokyo train map on the wall and you realize there will never in your life, from this point on, be a time that you don’t feel lost again.

So we wasted about half an hour trying to figure out how to use a ticket machine that wouldn’t give us tickets without us already having a ticket. Then we made this face some more: O_O;

Eventually I saw some blond haired guys that looked like they might speak English because I judge that way. “Excuse me”, I said slowly in a foreigner speaking English like a Japanese person might on a show teaching you English, “Do you speak English?”

They did! They were from Sweden and they explained that that the smart thing to do would be to go back in time and buy the JR Pass from America before going to Japan (>.< we learned this a lot). But since we didn’t do that they said that our next best option would be to get “The Suica Card”. Once we had that we could feed it to the ticket machine and then go to places rather than looking at places on the map, or on postcards, and pretend like we went there.

Of course the part of the station to buy the Suica card was across the street, up a thousand stairs, down some more stairs and across another street. That’s OK. All places in Japan have those same exact coordinates.

We had to buy them from actual, living, breathing, Japanese people in a ticket office which I was not prepared for. “WHAT NO. I was promised machines! MACHINES”. Really. I thought that Japan was a million times more technologically advanced than we are in the States and that by now they’d have been able to create some sort of program that simulates human interaction without actually making a nervous, introverted, fat American girl actually engage in it for real. Alas.

The ladies in the ticket office were very nice and spoke very limited English. I speak very limited Japanese. Actually, it was fun for all of us. I told them that I wanted to purchase a Suica card so that I could ride the Yamanote trains. At least that’s what I assume I told them. Maybe I told them “I butterfly dog giant ride train giddyup” and they just successfully took that to mean “Oh. They want to cause an earthquake to destroy the Yamanote line. Give them the Suica card for $15 each”. I don’t know. But we each paid our $15 and got our cards loaded up ($5.00 for the card- $10 put on the card) and then we walked across the street, up a thousand stairs, down some more stairs and across another street because we’d learned correctly that that is exactly how you get to any place in Japan. We swiped our Suica cards for the toll, RAN REALLY FAST TO GET TO A TRAIN THAT WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE, got on the train and then wondered:

“Did we do this, right?”

It seemed that there should be something else to the process. In Japan there are 4 different kinds of trains (this excludes all the varieties of buses and subways and what not). There are Local trains which stop at every single stop. There are Express trains which stop only at the big stops. There are Rapid Express trains which stop at only the BIGGEST stops. And there are Shinkansens (bullet trains) which make you feel like you’re going to throw up and never seem to stop at all. On these trains are Reserved and Non Reserved seats. That probably makes sense to you. There are also Green Seats which, I guess, is like First Class and cost a butt ton more money that I didn’t feel like spending on not knowing exactly what it was. But once we got our Suica cards we just sorta moseyed onto any ole train, sitting when we could and standing otherwise. On our way to Ueno we had a real feeling that “We have done this all wrong. We really are international criminals. We paid $15 to stand or sit on whatever train we want and be confused about it the whole time.” Go us!

The mascot for the Suica card is a penguin that looks as lost as we felt. So that was evidence to me that we were doing the trip correctly. I assume that little penguin was born in Japan and wanted to one day go to his homelands to see his penguin family, but never got there because he was too busy getting lost on various Japanese trains. Or just riding the Yamanote line forever and ever because it seemed easier than transferring to another confusing train line. He’s probably only ever seen Tokyo Tower on tv and in postcards too.


Right or wrong, we got off the train at Ueno Station, looked at our Ueno map and sighed. “We’d like to go to Ueno Park zoo, but it looks like we’ll have to walk for a thousand years. Probably up some stairs”.

So imagine our surprise when we rounded a corner out of the station past a bunch of children in school uniforms who appeared to be on a school trip to see Ueno Zoo RIGHT FREAKING THERE. On the map it is forever away. It’s like -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------à that far away. But really you step outside, yawn, make some comment about how you are glad to no longer be on a train and POOF! Ueno Zoo appears.

PART 2- LESSONS IN ANIMAL ANATONY

We were really excited about seeing a panda at the zoo. SUPER excited. We got to the ticket counter where we had to interact with a human being again (who was an incredibly sweet and smiley Japanese woman who made me think of a Japanese Sally Fields and should definitely be featured in some feel good, family movie about the strange people who visit the zoo). Then we walked in, asked “I wonder where the panda will be?” and POOF! The Pandas were RIGHT THERE. Right to our right. Signs everywhere screaming “PANDA!!! HEY, GUYS. PANDA!!!” This was amazing to us. Japan had hidden Tokyo Tower from us, certain that we’d destroy it, but tried to make it up for us by distracting us by putting everything we wanted in Ueno park RIGHT THERE when we wanted it.

There were a bunch of really cute animals. We saw the pandas, a bunch of monkeys, a tapir (who was hanging out with capybaras), elephants, leopards, tigers, polar bears, on and on. We also saw adorable Japanese children. This was a delight for all parties. As we thought “Awww! Look! Cute children” (all of them wearing adorable cloth hats) they were obviously thinking “Woooow! Scary, large foreigners!”. The zoo was a great place for cultures to collide!

Some of the children seemed to be tagged and released into the wild. They wore labels on the back of their shirt that I think identified them by name and also by what grade school they attended. Then they just walked around wherever they wanted to. I saw two little girls who looked like they might have been 7 or so years old holding hands. One of them was a tiny, pretty doll of a girl with her long, dark hair loose with a little bow in it. One of her hands was up to her face where she nervously chewed on the nails. The other hand was held by a skinny, short-haired, tomboyish girl. The long haired girl told the tomboy “I’m scared” and the tomboy girl said “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you!” and courageously took the lead. I was both cuted out and mildly disturbed. “Oh my god”, I realized, “That is a scene I would see in  a Japanese manga. And it just happened in real life”. Somehow it broke my mind to realize that such a thing could possibly ACTUALLY happen.

At one point Eel’s blood sugar got low so he had to take a quick rest next to one of the enclosures to eat some snacks. A little boy and his sister came by to look at whatever the animal was in there (I don’t recall) and squeal, LOUDLY, anytime they saw the animal do something. Eventually the little boy locked eyes with Eel and just stared at him, stunned, for a moment…. Before patting Eel happily on the knee and the leaping over him. He walked away, came by a second later, looked at Eel the exact same way, tapped Eel’s knee again, and then happily jumped over him again. We’re not sure what the deal was with that- but it was super cute and I’ve decided that it just meant “Welcome to Japan, beardly creature!”.

A lot of the enclosures at the zoo were multi-tiered. For instance you could see the seals from up above, down below and they even had a tube where they could swim over your head when you were down below so that you could see them up above AND down below. This allowed for multiple opportunities to watch animals poop which appears to be the entire function of a zoo. We got to watch a panda poop when we first walked in- then we got to go to another enclosure to watch another panda poop! We also got to watch them clean their butts in their water- so that was something. Then we saw a musk ox poop and then a bunch of monkeys poop. I saw the polar bear poop from up above and then we went to another place where we could see the polar bear from below, sitting on glass, so that we could have a close up of its butt. Thanks, Japan! Also Japan is very serious about educating visitors about the anatomy of their creatures. One of the first things we saw was a sign that taught us about a monkey- drawing circles around notable features we couldn’t read- including its balls. They’re so thorough!


Aside from animals, Ueno Zoo also has 5,000 vending machines. This isn’t unique to Ueno Zoo. This is how Japan is. Every few feet that you walk you have another opportunity to purchase orange juice, tea, coffee or Coke if you missed out on your earlier opportunity. There are very very few sugar free drink options in Japanese vending machines so on the rare chance you are diabetic and come across a Coke Zero in one of the vending machines you need to take that chance. You might not get it again for another 10 feet.
I had an orange juice, a hot milk tea (which burned my tongue and tasted way less yummy than cold milk tea) and then a more different orange juice out of different machines (Japan really loves its fruit juices). Tracy had a water drink infused with peach that tasted so delicious that we had to make the obligatory comment about how much better Japanese things taste than American things. Eel had a Coke Zero because he didn’t know if he could make it five more vending machines later to find another one.

At one point we sat down with our beverage collection (given that there are 5000 vending machines and no trash cans because I assume that Japanese people believe so much in recycling that they just eat their trash) and watched as a man all in black walked casually before the cranes, raised his hands AND BEGAN TO CONDUCT THEM. They all started going ape-shit crazy in so far as a crane can go “ape” shit. They started hooting and hollering and flapping around like mad. I’m pretty sure the Man in Black was an arch-villain to the cranes. When he lowered his hands and walked away they all stopped! We then watched as a few school girls, also in awe of what they had seen, went up and tried to emulate them. They raised their arms to conduct the cranes, but the cranes weren’t impressed. As they had done before the Man in Black’s arrival they just stood there. And pooped. Because they were in a zoo.

Near the cranes was a creature we’d never seen before called “The Secretary Bird”. Here’s a picture since I can’t describe how absurd and fantastic this creature was. While the other cranes were content to stand around pooping, this one knew no life other than vogueing. It came up close to us, tilted its head in a bunch of fascinating ways, and blinked its eyes at us. It knew it had something special. Not even the Man in Black could take that away from it.


PART 3- IT LOOKS LIKE  A PAINTING…. Because it is a painting

There is a temple in Ueno Park that we really wanted to go to. By Ueno’s map’s reckoning it was about a two week journey east so we knew that it would be about a five minute walk. We were right. It was BEAUTIFUL. I exclaimed upon seeing it “It’s like a PAINTING” and Eel said “That’s because it is” and he was right. It was under construction. Whatever. I saw a postcard of Tokyo Tower in Tokyo and I saw scaffolding and a sheet with a painting of a temple on it when I went to Ueno Park.

But there were some really cool things there. There were 50 copper lanterns that had been donated to the temple long long long ago by famous shoguns! There were also a toooon of wooden planks, prayers, that people left behind. Also a poignant commentary on nuclear bombs and a flame they had kept going from after the bomb had been dropped to remind people of it. I don’t think anything I have to say will give any of this credit, so I’ll do it with pictures.

Some time. When pictures get off my phone.

PART 4- “SHE WANTS ME TO BUY HER!??”

Then we walked back to the train station, RAN TO THE NEXT TRAIN THAT WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE, and headed on to Akihabara: Electric City. That is what the station is called. I assume that is just the full name of the prefecture. Akihbara is famous for having all kinds of electronics and generally WEIRD crap.
As soon as we got there we went into the Sega building which was a 7 or 8 story arcade. There were more chances to win cute UFO catcher dolls and also win smiling penis plushies. But there were fighting games on one floor and RPGs on another and… no, seriously, 7 or 8 flights of stairs for you to walk up in case you had somehow missed having stairs in Ueno.

Every building in Akihabara was like that. There was no building that didn’t have at least 7 flights of stairs for you to climb and there were often even far more than that. Also there was no air conditioning. Some floors had fans, but most just had humidity and heat. The idea is that you sweat so much in these buildings from climbing the stairs in the heat that when you need to go back down it’s really easy because the sweat pouring out of your skin turns the stairs into a slide! Those clever Japanese scientists!
We visited more arcades, incredibly strange souvenir stores (I got out of a vending machine a spoon holding an egg toy incased in a plastic ball. WOW!) and a pachinko parlor. It was loud and terrifying and I wanted to run away. So we went up all 8 flights of stairs first.

One of the very first things we noticed was that there were girls in maid costumes waving at and flirting with people as they went by. I don’t have a picture of that because they also had badges on that said in big English letters “NO PICTURES PLEASE THANK YOU”. One of them winked at Tracy and put a flyer in her hand that had a picture of the maid in question on it.

“What is this?” Tracy asked, mildly horrified.

“Oh”, I explained, “She wants you to buy her”

“She wants me to BUY HER!?” she asked and then quickly pocketed the flyer (since there are no trash cans in Japan). “WHAT?”

The maids work at maid cafes. There you can purchase time with a pretty maid who will play games with you, flirt with you, make drinks with you and eat with you! The more regular customers get more time with the maids of their choice and are called out by name- but the maids will hang out with anyone who pays for them. This absolutely disturbed Tracy until she realized it: “Wait. They’re like geisha??”

YES!

Quick lesson- geisha and prostitutes are not the same thing. You pay a prostitute money to have sex with you- but she’ll of course probably also listen to you talk and play games with you if you want. But you’re buying a prostitute for sex. You buy a geisha for the quality of her entertainment. She plays music for you, escorts you to big events, talks with you… she’s actually just a companion of sorts. Over time if you purchase her time enough you can probably get around to having sex with her- but that’s not actually her schtick and she DOESN’T have sex with people more often than she does. So these maids are JUST LIKE that- I assume. You pay money to have a cute girl spend time with you while wearing a maid costume.

My favorite part was watching some of the maids get off duty. They suddenly lost their childish mannerisms and high pitched voices and kinda trudged off towards the train station while talking on their cell phones and ignoring the people who tried to interact with them. Classic “It’s a living” kinda stuff. It was also fun watching ones GO to work because they started off looking tired, got to their spot of Akihbara and then were suddenly outlandishly alive and enthusiastic as they started handing out flyers.

Toys are cheap in Japan. It’s not fair. All the things I always end up having to pay $100 for in the United States (statues and what not) were like $30-$50 in Japan. If we weren’t so incredibly limited by having only carry-on luggage I’d have gone crazy buying that stuff. I guess it’s a blessing and a curse that I couldn’t.

We really didn’t have a lot of time to look around Akihabara after having gone to Ueno- so we never got to find the cat café that I wanted to go to. A cat café is a place where you buy to get food and drinks and be surrounded by 20 or more cats who you can also feed. IDEAL.

That day we ate at KFC in Japan (which was way better than in America) and at McDonalds in Japan (which was exactly, and disappointingly, the same as in America complete with orders getting screwed up).  Those were rare places in that they HAD trashcans… but the trashcans were weird and we didn’t understand them. There were four or five of them because Japan really IS big on recycling. Looked like one for plastic stuff. One for plastic bottles specifically. A paper one. One that you dump your liquids into before throwing your cup away. Some marked “combustibles” and “incombustibles”. Man, I dunno. It was thorough and intimidating… which is the Japanese way, I guess.

We also tried another public bathroom and were all shocked to discover that it featured no towels or dryers and no soap. Also you had your choice of Western toilets or Eastern squatting toilets. Japanese people all grow up learning to be Sumo Wrestlers and it is like a sumo wrestler that you must stand if you want to use a Japanese style squatting toilet (please note my sarcasm. Not ALL Japanese people are Sumo Wrestlers. Some take the Ninja or Business Man option instead). We watched as people used their own soap and then dried their hands with their own handkerchiefs that they brought with them. We just kinda grossly poured water on our hands and then wiped them on our pants as we had not been warned that we would need to bring our own soap and towels.

After that we boarded another train, got back home and watched a really, really , really random Japanese movie that I’ll tell you about NEXT TIME.

..NEXT TIME: I don’t feel like giving you snippets here because then I have to READ this again to write my post and then what if I don’t FEEL like writing about that? And then what if I’m just a disappointment to you because you don’t get to learn about bathrooms again because I forgot? Too much pressure, man. Learn to love what you’ve got. Geez. ^_^

Day 1- Shinjuku, Tokyo
I’m writing this post right after the last one I wrote when I was woozy and sleepy. This means that I am still woozy and sleepy. Why am I doing this rather than sleeping? It’s because I don’t want to forget to do this or get too lazy and decide I don’t want to anymore. It’s also because I’ve been sleeping off and on all day and I’m really freaking tired of it already.

If it weren’t so late I’d take a walk. Despite all the complaining we did about constantly moving up and down stairs and having to run from this place to that place… my legs have gotten used to a certain amount of exercise. They feel like they’re turning to concrete from all the sitting and NOT running around I’ve done today. Oooh- Eel says that the pool might be open! Could be that I leave this post in favor of rushing off to do that. Don’t look all hurt and abandoned; You won’t even notice my absence if I do. PROMISE.

PART 1- All MY other friends drive Gundams

I don’t know how we managed it. I really don’t. But the very first flight to Tokyo? We got on it. And we got seats in Business First- a distinction from Business class and First Class that I don’t actually know because I’ve always sat Plain Jane Economy in the past.

We were given these BIG sections to sit in. I don’t really know how to explain it. There was a HUUUGE tv in front of each of us that we could watch for free (tons and tons and tons of stuff on them). There was a little cubby hole in front of us where we could rest our feet (that they provided slippers for) when we leaned back our chairs all the way into BED position. Man, I’m sort of at a loss for words here. It was amazing and absurd. Business class is apparently about being in a hotel that feeds you too much. OK. I like eating and sleeping. Carry on then, Business class.

First things first, they provided us with a free drink. Any drink. Including a long list of fancy schmancy alcohol with names I couldn’t pronounce so I just nervously said “Ice water, please?” instead. I was nervous about it because I got the sense that because I wasn’t ordering Le FanchSchmancemay Chardonnay that people would realize that I was a phony and kick me off the plane. “THERE!”, they’d declare in the Queen’s English accent, “Imposter!”. We’d have a tense chase scene featuring a lot of running up walls, crazy flipping over other people drinking fancy drinks, and I’d make a bunch of panicked Jackie Chan faces.  I’m glad none of that happened though given that I’d exhausted my Fat Girl rushes around as I was trying to get to the gate. Also Jackie Chan is Chinese and I was going to Japan. And at any rate, I actually just wanted ice water because I thought maybe it was being dehydrated on the last flight that had made me so sick. The flight attendant poured the ice water without fighting at all.

Next they presented us with menus. We got assorted nuts in warmed dishes. Then we got an appetizer of sushi, sashimi, a piece of meat and a salad.  Next we picked our main course: I got some fancy seafood meal and Eel got a fancy steak meal. We got bread and a little dish of butter. I noticed that some people got a tiny jar of jam and though I did not want jam on my bread I was annoyed that I was not given any so that I might take the tiny sized jam bottle with me off the plane. SOUVENIR. From the United States. Whatever, to me it was still like a vacation and you get souvenirs from vacations and I wanted a tiny jam bottle! Then we got ice cream sundaes with our choice of toppings. Eel and I shared a chocolate, fresh strawberry and mixed nuts sundae that was the most delicious thing I’d had since the last delicious thing they’d fed us.  Later we got assorted cheese, crackers and grapes. Way later we got our choice of breakfast foods. I… just don’t even.

Lending more to the “I don’t even…” experience was that I was sitting next to a lady who I could tell really did not want me near her. She gave me and my Okami t-shirt a stern looking over (screw you, lady, Okami is awesome!), got on her phone and started talking to some friend she had been visiting in Seattle. Somewhere near the start of the conversation she sighed blissfully and said: “Thank you SO MUCH for letting me ride in your car too. All of my friends only have Lexuses.”

Oh, man. That is rough, buddy. How does she manage to get through her everyday knowing that she might have to ride in a Lexus? More importantly: what did she ride in when she visited THIS friend?

I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction (or irritation) of asking. I decided then that she and I would not be able to overcome our lifestyle differences and imagined a wall between us for the rest of the flight. But a see-through wall. Because I couldn’t help glancing over to her giant tv screen every now and then as she sporadically watched 10 minutes of several different shows on it. Cloud Atlas, Moulin Rouge, Law and Order, Les Miserables, some random documentary, back to Les Mis, some random tv show, back to Les Mis… It was very strange and fascinating to me. Maybe she was faking being a business class person too! Maybe she thought: “I need to get my money’s worth out of this experience. WATCH ALL THE SHOWS!” Maybe she was weird. It’s probably that she was weird. I can respect that.

 Eel and I decided to try watching a movie together the best that we could while writing notes to one another on a notepad about it. We chose Cloud Atlas which I feel we absolutely should not have chosen. It was long, rambling, disconnected and weird—like me… but less charming. Tom Hanks played a thousand roles and I think we were supposed to take it seriously, but I couldn’t! “Now Tom Hanks is an over-acting caricature of a thief!”, “Now Tom Hanks is a serious faced peasant man hounded by barbarians and new fangled technology”, “Now Tom Hanks is behaving in a strangely offensive manner!”. The plot of the movie sort of got lost in all the “Oh! Is that Hugh Grant being someone else now?” and “That lady can’t act in any of the twenty roles she’s doing in this movie!” moments. But that’s Ok. The plot was also summed up in the first 20 minutes of the film and then rehashed over and over and over and over again inexplicably. It was so incredibly disappointing because there were storylines in the movie that I actually liked and themes in the film that I also really enjoyed. The visuals were also cool. But it just was NOT a good movie. I think it was even less a good airplane movie. But we soldiered through it and I fell asleep during storylines that I didn’t care about. It seemed the right response. All my notes on the film were just pictures of me making faces and saying “What?” and “???” and “That lady really can’t act.”

After that we watched together a documentary on forests that seemed to have been edited for content. Every time a cool animal tried to bite or maim another cool animal the film suddenly switched to a different animal all together- making the documentary feel just as disjointed as Cloud Atlas (which was NOT edited for gore and was just disjointed). I’m never sure what emotion to feel when I see an animal kill another one. I sort of quickly represent both teams with my emotions to make sure that everything is accounted for. “RUN, MOUSE, RUN!”- “GET IT, OWL, GET IT”, “OH NO, CUTE MOUSE FACE, HID OVER THERE”, “OWL, YOU ARE THE COOLEST. DON’T LET THAT MOUSE GET AWAY. IT’S HIDING OVER THERE”. “Ooooh… poor thing…”, “GOOD JOB, OWL. YOU ROCK.”. So maybe I should be happy that the documentary kept me from going through split personalities. Or maybe that is precisely why I was sad that it kept switching. Maybe there is something truly rewarding about not knowing who to root for and just rooting for both sides. Or maybe there is something really wrong with me as a person.

We were also given forms to fill out before landing: a customs form and an immigration form. A rather snotty flight attendant asked if Eel and I were family because then we’d only need one of the second and I first said “yes” and then called her over to explain that we might not actually be (my life is complicated). “We’re married”, I explained, “But I kept my last name. Do we both need the forms after all?” She looked annoyed and responded with: “You made a mistake” and handed me an extra form. I’m guessing she thought that keeping my own last name was a mistake. I said: “I think you wearing that super cute scarf around your neck was a mistake because now I’m going to choke you with it!” Only I said that in my head so that she couldn’t fight back with an actually funny insult that would put me to shame or perhaps throw me in jail.

The forms were weird. There were two spaces up at the top to write our full names which meant that I wondered: “Which one do I ACTUALLY write my name in??” and then worried “If I put my name in the wrong one will all other information be in the wrong space?” and this panic led me to not filling the form out at all until half-way through the flight when everyone was asleep and all the lights were off. I used my iPod as a guide which allowed me to see two spaces at a time and fill them out in a truly terrible handwriting which I was sure that the customs and immigration people would really appreciate.

But eventually Eel and I filled out half of each form badly and then the plane landed in Narita, Tokyo!

PART 2- Bathroom Sentinel

The first thing we did was take pictures of the airport welcoming us to Japan. We were in the way of people that had actual important things to do like get outside and not use any of trashcans that Tokyo doesn’t have, so we had already marked ourselves as tourists. That’s fine. We were tourists!

The second thing we did was to sit against a wall and fill out the rest of our paperwork that we were supposed to have filled out on the plane. It turned out that Tracy, who has visited 800 bajillion other countries also wasn’t sure what the deal was with the two lines for the name and didn’t fill out parts of her stuff either. HIGH FIVE. The Japanese security guards watched us from afar but said nothing- perhaps terrified what the larger, stinkier Americans might do to their size 0 forms if they upset us.

Then Tracy and Eel used the bathrooms while I stood guard right outside and looked like a massive creeper. “Don’t mind me”, I might have said if someone asked, “I just like the sound of toilets flushing! I like it way more than going through Customs!”

When the two of them came out they had insights for me. There are buttons all over Japanese toilets. Tracy noted that she could make the toilet make a toilet SOUND without actually flushing (to save Japanese women the embarrassment of people hearing that they were pooping by making constant flushing sounds that make it sound like they poop a LOT). Eel found a button that sprayed a puff of fragrance at your butt. Both of them found bidet options. Eel found his, didn’t know what it was, and experienced startled and hilarious surprise when the mystery was resolved with water being squirted up his butt. ADVENTURE!

Since I didn’t go into that bathroom I don’t have much more to say about that experience.

PART 3- A girl named Fred

We mostly got through Customs and Immigration unscathed. My only real strange encounter was that we walked by a health area with pamphlets on what to do if you are sick. I tried to take an English language pamphlet out of curiosity and the Japanese security lady, wearing a mask over her nose and mouth (as we’d see all through-out the trip), sternly told me: “NO THANK YOU. No. NO THANK YOU” which I eventually realized meant: “Put down the pamphlet. It’s not for you. Get a different souvenir.” This reminded me a lot of the time I went to the Scientology church… but that’s a different story. At any rate, I felt no need to upset authority before I even stepped outside so I put the pamphlet back (and did not say: “FINE. Then NO, YOU’RE WECOME).

We didn’t see Fred, my friend from when I attended Beloit college in 2002 and 2003, immediately, so we did the currency exchange. Real quick, I’ll explain something that becomes important and amazing to us later:

Japanese yen to American dollar conversion is really easy. Basically you just take a zero off and you’ve got it. 100 yen= 1 dollar. 1,000 yen= 10 dollars. 10,000 yen= 100 dollars. Easy peasy one two threesy (Did I really just write that sentence?)

Afterwards Fred appeared like a ninja before our eyes- which makes sense since she’s been living in Japan for three years now. Seriously, even with her brightly colored hair, none of us saw her appear. She was just THERE. And hugging me! She and I babbled nonsense to each other about how long it had been since we’d roomed together in Beloit and Tracy and Eel politely let us do so. Then she escorted to us to the trains so that we could get to our hotel in Shinuku- a prefecture that we discovered was FOREVER away from the airport (about an hour) and cost a lot more than we expected.

PART 4- INTERNATIONAL CRIMINALS

Fred has lived in Japan for three years, but only recently moved to the Tokyo area. So she was confused by the rail system there too. She knew we had to board a specific train to get to Shinjuku, but wasn’t sure which. We boarded a train we thought was right only to discover that it absolutely wasn’t.

“Um”, she said with embarrassment, “I’m very sorry. This is… oh god… this is the wrong train. We have to get off at the next stop.”

Tracy and I weren’t sure how to respond. How big of an offense was this? Was it a big deal that we’d gotten on the wrong train? Eel knew how to respond though. He gleefully questioned, “Wait wait wait? Is this a CRIME? Are we INTERNATIONAL CRIMINALS now? Please say we are!”

Fred assured us that it wasn’t actually a big deal at all and then, seeing Eel’s crestfallen face, his ambitions of being an international criminal dashed before their time, she said “Oh. Ok then. Yeeeeees. It’s a big deal. You are DEFINITELY an international criminal”. Eel decided to happily believe her even though it was obvious she was just sparing his feelings.

So we got off at the next station and onto another train with big comfy seats. There was a woman in Fred’s seat. They tried to suss that out when it became clear. This was a more different wrong train. Fred was incredibly embarrassed. Eel continued to enjoy his International Criminal status. I wondered if it meant we’d have to get off again since we’d be sitting in people’s seats. The ticket checker dude came by and Fred talked to him and he decided it was OK that we stay there. Japan is sometimes very nice, and always very tolerate, of confused foreigners.

The seats were super comfortable. Being a criminal has it perks.

PART 5- Where my butt will never be cold again…

There’s going to be a lot of talk about bathrooms in my blog. I think I should feel weird about that or apologize, but instead I’m going to do nothing but warn you about it. So again: There’s going to be a lot of talk about bathrooms in my blog.

We got to the hotel and I asked Fred and Tracy to hide to the side while Eel and I checked in (apparently I could have made him lose his comp nights by having a third person with us so…um… I had to be careful). I went up to the counter and confidently checked in… in JAPANESE. I was pretty fantastic if I do say so myself. He said a thing. I said a thing. We had a thing going on, me and that Japanese hotel clerk. Then he said, full of confidence in my Japanese ability, “????????StuffSTUFFstuffSTUFFstuffSTUFF?????” What the heck, dude!? Why did you say all of that so fast? WERE YOU RAPPING AT ME IN JAPANESE? ARE YOU A FAMOUS JAPANESE RAPPER!? WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THAT THE HOTELS WERE RUN BY MUSIC SENSATIONS IN JAPAN!?

I asked him in Japanese if it was OK to speak English again. He laughed, agreed and told me that he was sorry- it was just that my Japanese was very good. I like being complimented. That bolstered my ego despite my knowing that he probably just said that because I said any Japanese at all. If I had only enthusiastically said:  “TAMAGO!” at him upon arrival (that means “egg”, btw) he might have expressed how impressed he was with my accent.

A nice lady led us up to the 24^th floor of the hotel and showed us the room. Beautiful room. It had a room of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building across the street and then I died inside from happiness because, uh… a lot of things take place at the building in one my favorite manga series. Why pretend I’m not a geek? I was super stoked. After she went away, I went down to collect Fred and Tracy so that we could make plans in our room.

It turns out… our room ate internet connections. There was no WiFi. And Fred couldn’t even get on her Japanese phone to use 4G. It just didn’t work. When I looked up how to get internet it said that we pay by device but did not say how much. Since I wasn’t even sure that my card would work in Japan or how much was in the account at that time- I didn’t feel comfortable purchasing internet for us all. So we didn’t have it, ever, in Tokyo.

So I used the bathroom instead of using the internet. I sat down and “WHOA, WHAT!?”. The toilet was super warm. Dude, it was heated. The toilet had a heated seat. Also, the toilet was in its own room as is the custom in Japan. Also there was a phone in there. And a bunch of buttons. This toilet had 3 different bidet options and you could change the pressure from low to high on the bidet. There wasn’t any way I wasn’t going to try it out. So I pushed: “Oscillating bidet” and then declared “ACK! AHAHAHAHAHA” after it did its thing with amazing accuracy. I stared curiously at the phone though. What is the phone for!? Do I lift it and someone at the front desk answers and brings me toilet paper if I run out? Do I make calls to my friends on the phone while doing my stuff? If I do that do I have a sound machine make flushing noises the whole time so that they can’t HEAR me doing my stuff? What is bathroom phone protocol??

There was a cute little sink in there too and no soap. So I walked to the actual bathroom to wash my hands (the toilet room is called ‘Toire’ or ‘Otearai’. The BATHroom is called ‘Ofuroba’).

Incidentally, when I buy my first house at the age of 234 I want it to be set up that way. I really really really like the toilet being in its own room and the way Japanese baths are… which I’ll get to now.

In Japan there is a separate area to wash your stinky body and then a 2 foot deep bathtub to soak yourself in. Because alone time is hard to come by in such a crowded country, having 15 minutes to just sit in a hot bath is an important and glorious part of the culture. In the hotels we stayed at there was a shower to wash in with AMAZING water pressure and then the bath. I cannot explain how wonderful it felt to shower and then relax in the tub.

After using the toilet I came out and we all decided we’d just wander around Shinjuku the rest of the night. Fred found us a place to eat where we ordered four meals and appetizers for around $40…total. Not each of us. Total. And it was a LOT of food. We got edamame, sushi, sashimi, chicken, onion rings, squid, tiny shrimp with their eyes still in, etc… Eel was surprisingly adventurous when it came to eating! He had one of everything (except the natto sushi, I think). He also ate the sushi and sashimi on the plane! We had flying fish which tasted just fine but was REALLY pretty. Someone should make a hairclip that looks like the fin of a flying fish. Seriously, it was lovely. I had remembered that in Beloit I tried natto and IT WAS THE WORST THING I EVER ATE EVER (which makes sense considering that it is very very old fermented beans). But still- I thought I should try it again. Scared, Tracy and I decided to go for it… after dipping it into soy sauce first. We took a bite aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand… it just tasted like soy sauce. Haha.  Oops. It still had a slimy texture we didn’t like though. Fred had never tried it before (I think?) and she went for it too. No problem. It was nothing like my first experience with it.

We also tried the shrimp- but we could feel the little legs and the eyes in our mouths so Tracy and I swallowed it down while making hilarious, uncomfortable faces. The squid was fine, but rubbery. But the rest of the food was like THE BEST FOOD I HAD EVER HAD IN MY LIFE. It was GOOOOOD. The different kinds of tuna sashimi were amazing. The sushi, obviously, was the best sushi I’d ever had. Thumbs up, man, thumbs up.

AND IT WAS CHEAP. Eel, Tracy and I thought it was a fluke but Fred said it wasn’t really. NO WAY. Japan is an expensive place. No way that it was so cheap to eat that much food. NOT. POSSIBLE.

Spoiler: Super possible. Somehow food was always cheap. Wait, almost always.

PART 6- “It’s a MUSHROOM, OK!?” “No.”

Then we found a convenience store and bought a lot of random snack foods. All of them delicious. Nothing really more to report there. Japan has the best food in the world. I can declare this having been to exactly two countries in the world.

Next was an arcade!! There were UFO catcher machines like I’d seen in every anime ever (basically- claw machines in the United States with actual CUTE stuff in them). I tried to win a cute teddy bear and failed. Then I tried again and failed. Then again and… THAT WAS WHEN TRACY WON SOMETHING! She got a bear in a skeleton costume for her niece and we were so excited about it that we squealed our delight, danced around, high fived each other and said “YAAAAY!”. There was an older Japanese man standing nearby watching and once we did that he bust out into the happiest grin I’ve ever seen. He looked truly, truly, truly happy about our victory. I didn’t think it was possible for a person to actually make this face: ^_^ in real life… but he did. He chuckled and said something happily that we didn’t comprehend but we all understood. It was: “Way to go, you silly foreigners, you!”.

Then Fred won something from a machine. Eel tried to win me a cute kitty from another machine but I beat him to the punch- winning my own super cute kitty from a machine (with one beefy arm like Trogdor).

Fred had us try out a super fun drumming game that she watched, with increasing frustration as  Tracy and I played it badly. “NO. KEEP DRUMMING” she kept saying as we grinned like idiots and forgot to drum. “KEEP DRUMMING, GUYS”. “SERIOUSLY. WHY AREN’T YOU DRUMMING?”

And that was basically that night as we wasted away our night eating and playing video games in Shinujuku. Fred had to leave and we hugged each other and promised to keep in contact and meet again. “One day….” We said dramatically as the wind blew, “We’ll be together again”.

OH. It’s important that I mention that maybe not EVERYTHING in the UFO machines was adorable kitties and bears. There were also snacks you could win and electronics. There were anime figurines you could get too- including gundams and scantily clad women including Rei and Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion (which is apparently still INSANELY ridiculous in Japan despite being like 20 years old). Also this stuffed mushroom dude that looked like… well, you know. Tracy was all “WHAT, NO? Why is this grinning penis everywhere? I don’t WANT a grinning penis! I don’t want a stuffed penis at all!”. Fred politely corrected her that “It’s a mushroom”, but Tracy was having none of it. “I hear what you’re saying” she said, “But I can also plainly see that it is a penis.”

That thing was ALL over Japan. Everywhere we went, in every machine, in every souvenir shop- you could get a grinning penis mushroom toy. I kept threatening to get one for Tracy and she kept threatening to exact revenge upon me should I do so.

Just you wait, Tracy. Just you wait…

We went back to the hotel and watched a few extraordinarily weird Japanese tv shows on the television before falling blissfully asleep.

NEXT TIME: The trio eats more cheap food and visits Ueno Park and Akihabara. You’ll be at the edge of your seats as you learn about vending machines, panda butts, monkey balls, renting maids and other very classy topics. Oh. And bathrooms. You’ll learn even more about bathrooms. ARE YOU READY!???

Also... Pictures to come SOON.
 

Day 1- SEATTLE
I’m still a little woozy headed and sleepy so I am sorry if this is hard to follow or boring. Conversely, if this happens to be hilariously scattered and bizarre I’m not sorry. Weird is acceptable. Boring is not. I think that should be a new family motto or something. Anyway~

First, planning for the trip was extremely hard though absolutely worth the difficulty when we looked at the price. Tracy works for United Airlines and as a perk she gets free tickets to anywhere in the United States and insanely discounted tickets on international flights. She gets to pick one person to share that specific benefit with and because she is amazingly cool this year she chose to give that to me. She also has very limited “buddy passes” that she can give out that, while not the same degree of discount, is still a really great deal when it comes to flying. The only caveat? We fly “non-rev” (‘non-revenue’ which means…something…). It’s essentially “stand-by”. So we don’t pay for the tickets when we fly and when we do pay for them it costs very little.  But for the trip it meant that we didn’t know what our arrival date would be for getting hotels or booking events. It meant that we couldn’t check luggage either because we couldn’t be certain that it’d go wherever we were going. It also meant that we had to wait for a flight with three available seats so that we could all travel together. The pressure was really on too considering that Eel’s new job required him to use up “day off” and “sick day” certificates for the year to go on the trip at all and that he absolutely, 100%, needed to be back by the 23^rd. Factor in general confusion about time and date in the United States and Japan for figuring out when would be the best time to see if we could attempt to get on a plane the stress was really on! Note: Japan is in the future. 14 hours in our future. This is great when you consider that the trip to Japan was a honeymoon present from my mom and our wedding was all about time travel. I won’t lie; on the plane I imagined the TARDIS sound off and on.

Eel’s new job is working for the Hyatt Reservation Center- a job with crazy awesome perks and incentives: one of them being 12 complimentary free nights at any Hyatt (excluding Hyatt Place and Hyatt House) anywhere in the world. The only deal with that is that only 3 nights can be used at any one Hyatt. We just have to book 10 days or more in advance. But what days to pick? If we cancelled a date there was a chance we’d get hit with a cancellation fee… which would be the price we’d have paid if the room wasn’t free. Do you feel the stress yet? I went for it and chose the 16^th and 17^th in Tokyo and 18^th and 19^th in Osaka (there were no free rooms in Kyoto and the map said that Osaka was the closest to Kyoto). BAM. Done. The rooms would be free. So long as we could get there. And we didn’t know we could. Our original plan  had us leaving on the 14^th for Japan so there was a relatively good chance we’d arrive on the 15^th and not have a place to stay. No problem. We’d find a hostel. Or a love hotel for the lulz. Or a ridiculously overpriced hotel. Or something. We’d stress about that when we got there we decided. Or when we didn’t get there. Whatever.

PART 1- GOOD MORNING, AMERICA, YI*YU*&^&*^*^YHSD?
Eel and I had to get up to get on a 3:00 am Amtrak to Chicago on Tuesday, May 14^th. I typically get up around that time so I didn’t suspect it would be too difficult for me to just continue on with my usual unusual work schedule. However, in the past I’ve also had times when my alarms didn’t go off and I was late. I also always pack things last minute because I think: “Gee, what if I need that particular whatever-it-is after I pack it? Oh man. It’d be so HARD to simply put it back. Better just not pack it until I am stressed about it!” This makes some sense for toiletries, but it makes zero sense for why I never remember to pack underwear, socks or books that I never read at home until the last minute. So… I opted instead to stay awake the whole day and night. Eel opted for the same. Hurrah! The adventure had already begun!

I’d seen that the train we were boarding at 3:00 am was actually the City of New Orleans (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvMS_ykiLiQ ß Thanks, Mom!). It had sleeper cars! I’d always wanted to try out sleeping in a room on a train and Mom, ever supportive of trying out new things, sprung for the tickets for us! So we got to the station, carry on luggage in tow, and wheeled up to the train. We were escorted to the last car and told that “Mumbles” had been awaiting our presence and would be making up our beds soon. No, her name wasn’t really “Mumbles”. Or maybe it was. I don’t know. She mumbled, you see…

We got to our room which had a couch that folded out into a lower bunk bed and, above, let you pull a top bunk down from the ceiling. We sat around goofily in the room, crowded by our luggage that we could have given to someone but opted to hang on to (WHAT IF I NEEDED THOSE SOCKS I PACKED OR THAT BOOK I NEVER READ DESPITE IT BEING DARK?). Mumbles never seemed to come. The train lurched forward and we sat excited, confused and exhausted on the couch until we decided to take the initiative and just bed ourselves down. “We” take the initiative means that I made whining noises at Eel and peered at directions in the dark while he did all the work. The top bunk had some sort of net and buckle feature to keep him from falling out of bed that didn’t actually seem to work at all (he didn’t fall off the bed, but if he had the net and buckles would have just laughed at him). Instead, all it really did was sort of get in his way and look weird.

Mumbles came eventually and mumbled some things several times that I never understood (language barriers and I wasn’t even in Japan yet). I verbally flailed back my confusion while Eel sort of dozed in and out. It must have looked like some foreign language programming as she used her strangely deep, mumbly voice and I used my chipmunky, whiny voice and nothing was successfully communicated. She said something about “breakfast” with a rising intonation. So eventually I responded with “I LOVE BREAKFAST” far too loudly. She mumbled some more and went away. I thought maybe she’d think I was insane and run away from the pancake loving, shouting chipmunk woman and her pointlessly buckled in, sleeping husband? No. Mumbles was made of stronger stuff. I contentedly lied in bed listening to a sleep playlist I had made a few weeks earlier called: “OMG IT IS HOT WHEN THERE IS NO A/C” (an ode to my constantly broken apartment air conditioner) and slept off and on. I woke up several times to a loud rapping at our door that I chose to ignore sometimes because, um, no. It’s a sleeping car! I wanted to sleep! Or pretend to be asleep! GEEZ. Eventually I  parted the curtain aside and realized: Oh. It’s Mumbles.

I opened the door and she said: “^(&(^&%^&%FUHKH^” which I decided probably wasn’t rude even though every comic book that I read where people said such things it was always obscene. But she was smiling nicely- so it must have been nice. So I smiled nicely back and said “Um, nope! I’m Ok.”. She said “Breakfast” again. I said “Breakfast?”. She said “&^*^%&*%&”. I frowned. She kept smiling. Eventually I figured out she was saying that breakfast had started in another car at 6 am and that there wasn’t much time if I wanted to go to the dining car. Unsure how to respond since I had earlier shouted out my declaration of love for morning foods I started walking towards the direction she pointed with money in my hand. She stopped me and said “What are you doing? You don’t do that. Don’t do that. Not like that. You can tip me though”.

No, really. That is word for word what she said and I understood it clearly. She must have read a language guide to Chipmunk in the hours where I slept or pretended to sleep in order to communicate certain ideas with me. I helplessly handed her 4 dollar bills from my hand and walked back to my room. She stopped me and said “Aren’t you going to get breakfast?” which made me imagine myself breaking down into a fit of helpless laughter. In reality I stood there and said lamely “I don’t know how.”

We finally got it figured out. Breakfast was included in our ticket (though the ticket did not say that anywhere at all). We just had to walk to the dining car between 6-8 am. It was 7:30 so we had to hurry. I had a series of miscommunications with Eel after that where I tried to figure out how we could get breakfast but also not abandon or suitcases filled with important socks, cartoon t-shirts and, you know, iPods, phones, passports, cash and a tablet. The room had no lock. Walking away felt unwise. He was tired and I was frustrated but eventually we concluded we needed to ask Mumbles. She said she’d stay in the car and watch our stuff. I made this face about it: -.- and finally decided to take my money, phone and passport with me. If Mumbles failed to protect our stuff from other passengers or decided to steal it I supposed that I could at least have a last laugh knowing that they were also getting a really bad romance book I’d purchased long ago for a quarter and could never finish (it’s really really bad).

We ate breakfast with a lady from Canada who I think I was insulting me but I couldn’t really tell because I was too busy LOVING BREAKFAST. It was good breakfast. We went back, our stuff was still there, and I hid away from Mumbles the rest of the ride there- listening to music, watching the sun come up and generally loving life despite my inability to communicate with anyone, including my husband, on that train. I’d survived that- I was confident I’d get through Japan just fine!

PART 2-ECONOMY PUNKS
Tracy met us at the Amtrak station at 9 am and we started our rush to get to the L to get to the airport. Frankly, that was what a lot of this trip was: rushing to one place to get on a thing that would get us to another thing so that we could get to another place. I often imagined myself running away from exploding buildings or Godzilla or Cybermen and Daleks while we did this.

But we rushed to the L where I purchased a $20 ticket at a machine because you have to purchase a ticket for exact change and that is all the money I had. Tracy and I decided she’d buy it back from me when we got back to Chicago. I was stupid about trying to get the ticket through the slot that eats it (it yells “I LOVE BREAKFAST” as it ravenously and greedily steals the tickets from your tiny, delicate hands so I was really concerned). Because I was being slow about this process the security lady, who has fed many hungry machines before, came and gave me the most amazing look I have ever seen in my life. It was a pointed, hateful, angry, “Are you really so stupid? Why are you wasting my time?” look. And she just held it as I stared back at her. Unblinking, unadulterated disdain at my incompetence only made me further incompetent. Who would eat my tiny, delicate hands first: this machine or this woman? I eventually got through and behaved as though I did not notice the look- but it was a shining moment of entertainment for Eel who laughed about it for about fifteen minutes later. “Did you SEE that look? That was so amazing!” I wanted to be mad at him for not having my back, but he was right. I think she got hired as a security lady just because she was able to make that face.

We arrived at the airport and steeled ourselves for the inevitable. We would be waiting for a plane for a thousand days and when the thousand and first day came we’d go eat at Chilis and then get a hotel in Chicago. Maybe we’d use our entire vacation exploring the airport gates and eating at Chilis. Hey, Chilis is good food. We were prepared.

But we got on the FIRST PLANE. The first one we tried to make? BAM. ON IT.

We had been looking into going straight to Japan from Chicago but there was only one flight for that and there was no way we were going to make it. I don’t remember why. Tracy has all the information. I just have all dry sarcastic commentary about it. At any rate, she went back and forth on whether or not we should go to Seattle or San Francisco to try to catch a plane to Japan the next day and I went back and forth on whether or not I should have repainted my nails before going to Japan (final call? Yes. They are very fashionable there.). She decided that Seattle was our best bet.

We’d actually talked this over online before we left and she booked a hotel in Seattle that would cost us each about $26 a person. If we didn’t make it? Well, we’d be out that, but oh well. She and I had difficulty saying the name of the hotel right. It was the… um… Red…Thing Inn. Not Red Roof. Not Red Lion. Was it Red Lion? I don’t know. We called it a lot of things like “Red Maned Lion Maw Inn” and “Red Thing Sleep Inn”. I can’t for the life of me figure out why people sometimes think we’re obnoxious…

So we were shock and awed (in a non-bombing kind of way) that we got on the VERY FIRST plane to Seattle we tried to take. And we got Economy Plus seats! Which I thought was totally rad. “Whoa” I said, “I can put my feet a few more inches in front of me. This is the best thing ever. I will always travel Economy Plus… Except I probably won’t.” But really: it was awesome. I was like: STREEEETCH. “Oh! Don’t mind me, Nobody-Who-Is-Right-There” because my stretching didn’t affect anyone. Eel and I got to sit together because Tracy let us gross married people do so. So we stretched too far and kicked our feet out too far and annoyed each other just because… thus invalidating the purpose of Economy Plus but giving our own sense of purpose, being loving jerks to one another, plenty of validation. There was also a tv function that we could pay for to watch things like “Honey Boo Boo” and whatever the heck this “BAD GIRLS IN GREECE” nonsense was that kept getting advertised. Strangely, I decided I wasn’t interested.

PART 3- I’M A 5-STAR, MIGRAINE TYPE OF BITCH
Maybe it was the Diet Coke that I had on the plane, or the unusual way that I held my head while I annoyed Eel, or the fact that the Pacific North West has a PAIN index in place of a pollen index (No seriously, Dylan tells me this is true so I believe him in place of looking up to see how accurate that is. That is what friendship is about)- whatever it was… My neck was hurting BADLY and had caused a migraine that made me all nauseous when I got off the plane. I threw up and hated life a little bit and sort of dreaded what this might mean about a 10 hour flight to Japan if I could not tolerate a 5 hour flight to Seattle. We had big plans to go see the Seattle Needle (our plans for visiting WOTC and Paizo dashed by arriving an hour too late)- but every time I considered this prospect I had to sit down and feel sorry for myself (HEY, GUYS! I’m an awesome traveling buddy!

Everyone should want to travel with me based on that description!). We ended up ordering pizza and Tracy turned on the tv and found this show where girls kept saying “I am the BADDEST of the bitches” and “All these other bitches ain’t no kind of bitches” and talking about places they’d visited that ended in “~nos”. I eventually broke out of my pain pity to say: “Are you watching Bad Girls in Greece?”. YES. SHE WAS. And NOT for $8.00. That’s right. As we all sat around and watched girls declare “I AM A FIVE-STAR TYPE OF BITCH” and “This bitch respects loyalty and respect and I don’t have time for no fake-ass bitches” I marveled at how lucky we were that we doing that for free!

I hate to admit that we actually got invested in watching that show and that calling anything and everything a “bitch” just became a thing we did for the rest of the trip. So far as we could see, there wasn’t any point to the show except to say “bitch” a lot, dance grossly and punch other girls for being fake. It might have been the tons of Excedrin I took or the tasty pizza we ordered, but I’ve decided to believe that it was watching the antics of two bitches named “Raqelle”/”Rocky” and “Shannon” (or Shanrock”)prove their enduring Bad Girls friendship to the other girls that wanted to bring them down that eventually healed me of my pain. YEAH, SHANROCK. YOU GET IT, BBs.
Let’s pretend I didn’t say that.

I eventually fell asleep, snoring peacefully to the sound of Eel and Tracy watching a matchmaker show. I woke up the next morning happy and revitalized- ready to get on a thing (shuttle) at a place (the Red Robot Restinghouse) in order to get on another thing (a plane) at another place (the airport) to go to another place (Tokyo).
NEXT TIME: Rhiannon, Eel and Tracy continue their traveling adventures: this time in Tokyo, Japan (Shinjuku Prefecture). Rhiannon meets an old friend from her past, Eel tries flying fish and Tracy wins a stuffed animal… as well as the affection of an older Japanese gentlemen. Will the group learn to get past their discomfort of eating things with the eyes still attached? What are these strange buttons on the toilet? And why aren’t there any trashcans in Tokyo? This and many more revelations to come!

  I don’t even know where to begin with this tale, so I guess I’ll just jump right in. Today Eel and I met up with Tybar, the man we met in the Exalted chatroom who said that he would marry us on Sunday. Neat, that all went extraordinarily well. He plans on having one part of the service where he leads us to guests and has the guests explain how they met us (how their characters met us). Should be hilarious. If anyone wants to be a part of this, let me know and I’ll get you in contact with him. He’s looking for more “organized roleplayers” for this portion.

This took place at the Omni Hotel- one of the hotels that connects via walkway to the convention center. This walkway also leads to the mall. I can’t quite explain this if you haven’t seen it, but just trust me.

http://www.indydt.com/images/skywalkmap.gif    ((that's a map of how the convention center and hotels are laid out))


Eel and I wandered up to the walkway and there on the walkway was a white Xbox 360, Inception and the Green Hornet just… sitting there. No one was around. It was just there in the walkway where people pass by, close to the mall entrance.

http://xbox360repair.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/xbox-360-repair.jpg   ((That thing- no wires))


I was worried that it would get stolen. Somehow, some strange people had forgotten their xbox on this walkway and would be upset later when it had been stolen. I wanted to take it to either Mall Information or back to the Omni Front Desk so that it would be safe. Eel thought that we would look suspicious carrying it off and thought it might just be better if we left it. No one would just leave their stuff there. Given that I recently left my phone at Wendys, I wasn’t so sure. I figured: If someone loses their stuff what they’ll do is check the nearest hotel and the mall. This debate went on for a bit of time.

At which point a strange lady in a blue suit came out from the hotel side of the walkway and asked if we needed help. We explained the situation and this exchange occurred (or something similar):

Me: Someone just left this Xbox here… I don’t know what to do. I think we should take it to mall security or the hotel.

Lady: They just left an xbox?

Me: It was just sitting here.

Lady: Maybe they’ll come back for it?

Eel: That’s what I said. They might want to come back here and will be upset when it’s gone.

Me: But they’ll check the hotel then, right?

Lady: Maybe it’s a test. Or a prank! Maybe they want to see what you’ll do! Maybe it’s like a game show.

Me and Eel: Um…

Me: I don’t think so. I think I should take it somewhere.

Lady: I’d leave it. You should leave it. You’ve got a really good heart. I like that, that’s great. But you should leave it.

Me: Thank you, but…

Lady: :walks back to hotel:

Despite two votes for possibly leaving it, I was not convinced. I suggested to Eel that I could take it to the hotel and then leave a note on the walkway where it was- not mentioning what the item was but that it could be retrieved at the Omni hotel front desk. He wasn’t sure.

AT THAT MOMENT a man came RUSHING through the doors on the mall side of the walkway. He had two big shopping bags in his hands and was BOOKING it. Right behind him a guy was chasing him, Gen Con badge flying in the air as he ran. He lashed out to grab the bags out of the hands of the first guy, but First Guy was too fast. They ran into the convention center.

Two guys coming from the convention center were just as shocked as we were. “Getting into the drama?” one of them asked.

I worried it might be a mugging. The first guy got away and the second guy was clearly upset- we could see them through the windows of the walkway.

Eel: I’ll…get that piece of paper for you to leave the note

Me: Heh. Yeah.

As I was writing the note that read: “Hello! Sorry for the inconvenience but we worried that your things might be taken. We’ve taken them to the Omni Hotel Front desk. –Concerned Passerbys”

Eel watched as the mugger ran down into the streets below us eventually casually disappearing into the crowds.

When I looked up from the letter, in the distance I saw a giant, yellow limo with a chicken on top of it- lending an even more surreal feeling to the entire situation. The writing on the side said “Chickenlimo.com” Go there. See what I saw. Try to imagine seeing that thing, randomly, after discovering an abandoned Xbox 360 in a walkway and witnessing a mugging.

http://www.chickenlimo.com/index2.php  ((Seriously, look at that thing...  WTF))


This year at Gen Con has not been boring.

 I like to gripe.  So let's get this thing GOING:

1) Theo has always had nasty, gross, stinky poops.  I have come to accept my fate as a lady with two attractive cats whose bodily functions will never work right.  Moon pees; Theo poops.  Right now Theo is sick.  He apparently had some massively huge, awful poo experience while Eel and I slept and proceeded to smear that poo all over the carpets and the furniture in the apartment as though he were not a cat, but instead a cartoon monkey.  He also has a BIG, HUGE, HARD glob of REALLY STINKY poo stuck to his butt that I cannot get off without shaving or cutting it off.  It's also RIGHT THERE by his important junk and I'm scared to hurt him.  I have very, very, very little money in the bank (an absurdly little amount of money), but I have to take him to the vet now anyway.  So there's that.  My only amusement comes from the fact that he will have a huge, bald butt soon.  He was far too handsome before anyway.

2) Derek the Gen Con Blah Blah Blah said that by this time he'd contact me back about which hotel things were happening in (not that I can afford it right now- I  can't until Wednesday of next week).  People still want to know where to stay in Indy, what time and date and actual PLACE things are going to be, and they want to share in the joy of planning costumes and decorations with me.  I'm stubborn.  I don't want to DO those things until I have an HONEST TO GOD VENUE.  I feel like buying knick knacks and planning clothes is just jinxing things if I don't have a location!  Meanwhile, we're supposed to get 15% off staying at the hotel that hosts the wedding... BUT I CAN'T RESERVE A ROOM BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW WHICH ONE THAT IS.  Each day prices get higher and higher.  Each day I get angrier and angrier or more and more apathetic (it's Friday I'm in love).

--Note about that above gripe in case it's confusing:  there are 4 hotels that are linked to the convention center. These hotels also host the convention.  Some conference rooms have panels and games set up in them.  So: Yes, I am still getting married at the Convention Center.  The hotels are a part of the convention--

3) I'm trying to finish my thesis.  Everytime I send a chunk to be viewed- I'm told that I'm doing it wrong and that I should do more of "this" and less of "that".  When I think I'm doing that, I'm still doing it wrong.  Lately, my advisor has been taking WEEKS to respond to me.  I have to have a final draft (before corrections) done by mid March to graduate in May.  IT IS ALMOST MARCH OMG AND I AM NOT GETTING ANYWHERE!!!!

4) We got a notice in the mail three weeks ago or so telling us that if we want to stay at these apartments that we need to resign the lease like NOW.  I figured "Eh, we'll prolly move somewhere cheaper" and ignored it (I figured we had until August).  We looked at some houses, but I have concerns about all of them (price, location, broken crap, space, etc).  The other day a lady I've never spoken to before called me (I think she runs these places now) to ask if we're staying because 1) our lease is up at the end of May (!?) and 2) She is going to start bringing people over to see our place ASAP, whenever she feels like it, and will not call us EVER to tell us when.

Not call us EVER?  That is CRAP.  That is THEO style crap.  I have to wear pants and have a clean apartment ALL THE TIME!?  I lied to her and said we're staying here.  She said  I have a week to resign the lease.  That means I have a week to find a new place and IT IS NOT WORKING OUT.  Maybe we'll stay here.  >.< I DUNNO.  

5) Final gripe: I am tired of cleaning poop.  I hope our landlord stops by to show the apartment and walks into a wall of stench and gets cat poop on her shoes.  -.-!

 I am lying on my couch and I have two kitties to my side keeping me from being able to get up off the couch. It's out of my control now.  It's time to waste a morning on the internet.  C'est le Vie, right?

 Oh my gosh!  After that last post and after sending out the message to some of my friends here as well, I feel so much more...er... overwhelmed than I did when I was just, you know, talking to Derek the Event Coordinator at Gen Con.  Apparently there are these things called plans and people are very interested in them.  It seems that people have lives, jobs, babies, families, and budgets that they need to be concerned with and like to know things like exact dates, times, attire, costs, and viable hotels and they, I dunno, they expect that I should know these things being as, I guess, they assume that I'm supposed to be making plans.

Bad news, guys.  My hands are tied here.  Even after the fire was lit under my butt to get me running, I discovered that there was still a pot I had to climb out of and Derek the Event Coordinator is the dedicated chef that has been using his Gen Con Spoon to push me back in every time I try to escape.  He's been peppering me with details, but the plans still aren't cooked enough.  Ok, that analogy was long and convoluted; sorry.  I'm tired.  My eyes are still trying to focus on this screen.

What I'm trying to say is that I made the announcement on livejournal perhaps a tad bit prematurely.  The degree of planning I had was like "Oh gosh.  A winter wedding in Hawaii would be nice." not "We shall get married at 11:02 am on March the second of 2011 at the Totally Made Up Cathedral in Some Place that is Very Specific and the colors shall be yellow and pale blue!".  Right now this is what I can say:

Derek (the Event Cooridnator, I like to say his FULL NAME, Ok?) says that it sounds great that we want to rent a room that will hold 50-60 people on Sunday.  As of now he's making sure that I can get it for the hours of 11-3.  It will be an Open Event which means that it is free.  So far as I can tell, that will allow family and friends to come without buying a Gen Con badge (which is costly), but you know?  I don't actually know yet.  I chose those hours not because the wedding will be 4 hours long ( HAAALE NO), but because we have to provide our own set up and decorations (an hour?) and we also have to clean the place back up (another hour).  I want the decorations to have a lot to do with TIME and SPACE travel.  I'm thinking broken clocks, hour glasses, a clock that goes backwards, a clock that goes forward very fast, a Tardis, some phony old timey and futuristic photos of people in the wedding... That kinda thing.  

Those of you who have said you want to come?  I AM SO HAPPY!  But let's keep this a secret for now OK?  Truth is, I want exactly as many strangers to crash that wedding as I have people I know...er...crashing the wedding.  Can you dig it?  If I say now on facebook "OPEN INVITATION TO MY WEDDING!" I'm going to have work colleagues coming who I don't want to invite, old High School friends who I don't want to come, and what not...  I put the message on livejournal because everyone here (and who I have linked to here via Facebook message) are people I'd like to come.  Later when I have definite plans I'm going to send a few more people an invite on facebook.  Until then: Shhhhhhh!  

Also, a word on this convention.  It's a gaming convention, yes, but it is mostly Roleplaying games.  A great deal of the events at Gen Con are: miniature games (games with...minis... that battle), card games (like Munchkin, Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh), tabletop roleplaying games (like Dungeons and Dragons or Exalted) and LARPS (Live Action Roleplaying Games-- like my wedding).  While there are video game and anime rooms those rooms are very, very small.  There is a small section dedicated to them, but they're open for when people are between "real" events.  The games are limited to usually: Rockband, katamari damacy, Dance Dance Revoultion, and a few old shooter games and fighting games.  I think there's about 4 video game rooms and they are usually filled with people so you gotta wait your turn.  The anime rooms are located at the back of one of the hotels usually.  There are about 4 or 5 rooms for that too ( and man, last year that section was STINKY).  I mention this because I'm trying to save some folks money by ensuring they can come to the wedding without buying a badge.  If you want to go to the convention primarily for video games and anime, I'd say: do it!  But maybe only buy a badge for one day?

Also, because it's amazingly backwards: Gen Con is our honeymoon.  Pretty much we're honeymooning and THEN getting married.  Don't judge! That means that you might not get to see us all that often (unless you are going to panels and games and voice acting events!) during Friday and Saturday.  We can totally hang for awhile on Sunday, but again... I'm trying to save some money here for you.  Those hotels get booked VERY QUICKLY because this is a big, huge con and the prices get crazy.  The badges are expensive.  And I would feel really really really bad if misrepresented the situation or the convention to anyone.

Beyond that: You are the Chosen Few!  Choose your Destiny!  SONYA BLADE VS JOHNNY CAGE: FIGHT.  Oh, wait.  Scratch that last part. What I mean to say is that I put this message on livejournal because I was fairly sure I knew who read this.  If you're an lj friend (or a family member, of course): you've been invited to take part of the VERY START of my planning.  You know what I want to do, you can help me (or not) in anyway that you want, and you've been invited before I've made the really awesome wedding invitations....that I will make one day.  Please don't write on my wall on facebook: OMG I AM SO EXCITED THAT YOU ARE GETTING MARRIED! or take out an ad in the newspapers around the world congratulating me.  We are ninja, friends!  We plan in secrecy!  We know things that the rest of the world does not know.  And we shall keep this information until the time is right and the world is ready.  Until then:

Go, ninja, go, ninja, go!

 
I just had a crazy dream where Eel and I were the Doctor's (the 10th Doctor- Mr. Tennant) companions.  He was awesome, charming, flawless, etc... except he kept singing this crazy song about a sock he had knitted.  I wish I could remember the words because in the dream I thought it was freaking hilarious.  At one point, outside of Denny's, he started singing the song and a bunch of people who were waiting for seats inside the building started singing along and we all became very close because of it-- like BFFs, man.

But all dreams have their non-sensical parts (yeah, that's right.  I just pretended that the paragraph above made sense).  The Doctor was sometimes David Tennant and sometimes Christian Bale.  Anytime he was Christian Bale he was MEAN and distant and hard to work with and I'd be all "I FREAKING HATE BEING THE DOCTOR'S COMPANION.  I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS CRAP" and when he'd go back to being David Tennant I'd be like "MAN.  Being the doctor's companion is off-the-hook crazy awesome!".  Often when Christian Bale stopped being the Doctor I'd see him walking about town as Mary's husband Daryl.

Meanwhile, the Doctor had tasked Eel with driving a car stealthily to KFC to get their artifact, heirloom milk dishes made out of alien ivory.......... uh, yeah.  

I felt the urge to share this dream because

1) I hardly post on here anymore

2) It's Ingrid's fault that the Doctor sang about knitted socks.  She has to come face to face with what she did!

3) Daryl made an appearance and I need to know how Mary feels about Daryl actually being Christian Bale.

4) I want someone to tell me why I dreamed that Eel had to steal artifact, heirloom milk dishes from KFC  (no, seriously, that came out of nowhere)

5) DOCTOR WHO CHRISTMAS SPECIAL SOON!  I AM EXCITE.

Edit:: Also, I forgot to mention that he was driving some crazy junk yard car to get to KFC.  The restaurant looked normal at first, but after he got the milk dishes and ran back to the car--it was like KFC was on a big plot of desolated ground.  It was barren and covered in sand and looked like no one had really ever visited the place.  All the same, the employees were pissed about losing out on their alien ivory artifact.