Oh, my stars and garters!

All aboard the sushi train

I've started to post stuff from our trip on flickr. Today's installment: crappy iPhone photos and a couple of videos too.

Eric continues to add to his set as well. His food and drink batch is my favorite so far.

It's a lot of fun to go through and select my favorites and tweak and tag them, but with 750+ files, it's going to take a while. 

Chinese red lanterns

On dreary days it is nice to have a husband with a florist friend who hooks him up with day-old bouquets. Not pictured: black calla lilies, black hydrangeas, green chrysanthemums, and pink tea roses. I guess no one else wanted beautiful flowers today.

Sorry, babes.

I hate to criticize my husband in such a public fashion, but I have to say that Eric was very, very unwise to buy so many bags of my favorite candies so long before Halloween.

Seriously, fuck those little kids. Did they get their property tax bills in the mail this week? Are they trying to quit smoking with nothing but some shitty gum and some goddamn aspirin* for help?

I'm sorry, what's that? No? Yeah, no. No. Of course not. I didn't think so. So the motherfucking Skittles are mine. The Haribo gummi bears, too. The porch light will be off. Go away.

*I have no idea why the aspirin. It doesn't really do anything. But it's nice. First of all, the aspirin is this really good shade of orange, the kind of orange that makes you feel like you're taking something really efficacious. Also, it kind of stops my bones from feeling like they're going to burst into flames and burn through my skin. Those are reasons enough for me, right now.

Ok, but listen, seriously, don't worry about the aspirin, but you should know that right now I really am totally eating all those little kids' candy--this is taking forever to type because I keep stopping to get up and get more snack packs of Skittles and open them up and shove them into my mouth--and I'm glad.

Crap crap crapitty crap

I have a chest cold, so I already feel like shit. I slept all day, so I haven't had a cigarette in 17 hours. I am out of cigarettes, so I would have to put on pants to buy some. I also have a giant box of nicotine gum that I had to buy so I could have a few pieces for the longer plane flights, so I have backup, even if it tastes like black pepper and dirty socks.

All this seems like it adds up to something. But what could that something be?

Nothing I'm interested in, I'll tell you that much. It would be stupid to not at least try, though.

Laggard

I came home, promptly spilled beer all over my laptop (it dried out fine, but boy, was I bummed), grappled with stupid neighbor drama (Our cat has no top teeth! He can't be biting your cat! Keep your damn cat inside if you don't like the vet bills!), and rode a very long and uncomfortable wave of jet lag (oof).

But I also hung out with my sister, saw some friends, gave out presents, planted some flowers and vegetables, and ate a giant plate of enchiladas. I now feel sufficiently welcomed home, despite the big unpleasant reality smack.

I am saving the pleasure of going through my photos for tomorrow. Eric has started posting some here if you want to see them (today's installment: cute things!). The camera I brought was just bulky and shaky enough to piss me off, so he ended up taking the lion's share of the pictures anyway.

Ungggh

Los Angeles is bright. It's like 4 in the morning tomorrow as far as my body is concerned. Anyway, just one more flight then we'll pet the cats for a while and go to bed. I like bed. Bed's nice. You know what's cool? Is when you get to go to bed.

Roppongi is totally gross, but I don't know of anywhere else on earth I can buy a Kapibarasan douchebag for three dollars.

Last night

We are back in Tokyo and have about 18 hours before we have to catch the bus to the airport for the long flight home. It was a bit of a shock to get dumped off the monorail into Tokyo rush hour tonight after a week in quiet Okinawa and practically comatose Kume Island.

We are regrouping in an extremely nice hotel room--the toilet has a massage feature and an air dryer, for chrissake; I want to rip it out of the wall and sneak it into my carryon--trying to figure out how to make the most of these last few hours.

I wish we had another week to spend exploring and hanging out with family. This might have been the most fun 2.5 weeks of my life so far.

I suppose I should stop with the typing and make with the studying of maps...more later, plus lots of real pictures in the weeks to come.

Misstep

We spent the last few days on Kume Island, which we had read was the prettiest of the smaller Okinawan islands. After a few hours there we realized the guidebooks had been silent on whether the other islands were pretty at all.

Oh, it was all right. The sea was blue, the hotel pool was clean, and we rode bikes to an extremely cool volcanic formations and ate a kick-ass fish dinner in a friendly restaurant. But it was also run-down, insanely windy, and creepily empty. At first we thought it would be awesome to have a tropical island to ourselves, but after a few hours we felt very conspicuous, and like maybe everyone else knew something we didn't.

So now, as we sit in the tiny airport waiting for an expensive last-minute flight because the ferry is docked due to giant waves, we have vowed to each other: no more side trips to out-of-the-way vacation spots in the off season.

Ferry ride!

Oh kin a wa

Okinawa might be the strangest place I've ever been, and it's not just because of the snake whiskey and pork jerky (the delicious, delicious pork jerky). At least where we're staying there is this mixture of Japanese, American, military, agrarian, and island cultures that is just really bizarre. I wish I could describe it better, but we haven't been here long enough for me to figure out the first thing about it, so you'll just have to trust me.

We've been driving around and sightseeing, eating delicious Okinawan and homecooked food, and hanging out with my sister-in-law and her husband and their two kids. It's cool to see my sweet, shy seven-year-old nephew growing tall and self assured and fun to watch the three-year-old take in every last thing around him and try to figure out how to bend it all to his will. 

Oh, I figured out a few days ago that I have only been able to post pictures or text on the iPhone, not both, so a bunch of text didn't make it through last week. I fixed the posts if you want to read them. Ok, bed.

Okinawan pork jerky (oh my god make the tacky goodness stop)!

 

Okinawan donut sticks (we have fallen into a tourist trap and I kind of never want to leave)!

Okinawa snake liquor (it's smooth)!

Okinawan fish pedicure!

It tickled really bad at fiirst, but my feet felt so soft and light afterward. Even Eric liked it after the initial weirdness.

Oh, my god, I just discovered you can buy cheap beer at the airport to take on the plane.

But really, why shouldn't you be able to?

Fly through

I'm sitting in the Osaka airport killing time before our flight. Air travel in Japan is so easy. I'm jealous; it's how it used to be before the era of pointless security rituals descended on America, except even faster and nicer.

Even with the language/alphabet barrier, the efficiency of almost every single person and system we've encountered makes this an exceptionally pleasant country to travel around in.

The best thing ever was disovering you can send your bags ahead to the next city for like 10 bucks, zip over on the train unencumbered, and collect your stuff when you check in at your hotel. There are so many nice little things like that here. Japan as a whole is so freakishly competent that it's almost disturbing.

Anyway, I should stop rhapsodizing, get a drink, and board a flight that I bet you a hundred million yen will pull away from the gate at exactly 3:55.

Let's try this again...

Ice cucumber sign, Ohara.

It's our last night on the mainland, at least until we fly out of Tokyo next week. Tomorrow we go to Okinawa, and while I'm so sad the first part of our trip is over--it really has been incredible--we're looking forward to some good family time and a slightly less breakneck pace. I am sure Osaka has its charms, but we are just too tired to look for them tonight.

Kyoto was great, clean and happy. Sunday was a little misadventurous, with a terrifying two-hour bike ride on increasingly narrower streets up to a monkey park that turned out to be really kind of gross. You can feed the monkeys out of your hand, and at first it's amazing. Their hands are so quick! Their eyes are so intelligent! But then you realize it's not intelligence so much as crafty greed, and they fight a lot and smell like monkey shit, and it's just kind of...icky. If I had to do it over again, that's not how I would spend my one full day in Kyoto. At least the scenery was pretty and the bikes were fun once we figured out the traffic. I always sniffed at the electric-assist bikes, but they're great, especially at full power. I kind of want one.

It's hard to write for very long on an iPhone and I have to pack, so I'll save the rest of the stories for another time. Oh! I ate fugu and raw chicken both on the same day and did not die. Not even a little bit.

Japan done whupped our ass.

Oh, octopus balls!

View

We are staying on the top floor of a business hotel overlooking the massive Osaka trainyard. I think this is very cool now, but I may feel differently about it when it's time to sleep.

Kyoto seems like it would be a nice place to live.

International incident

Today at the Kyoto subway station I set off a very loud alarm while trying to flush the toilet. Do not push the green button on the wall next to the toilet is the lesson for today. That toilet never did get flushed, at least not by me. In my defense, though, aren't alarm buttons pretty universally red?

It is my duty to tell you that Eric karaoked to Billy Joel

But I am not off the hook either, as I got roped into "We Are the World," which is a very, very, veryveryvery long song. Somehow a quiet drink on the way home from dinner turned into an evening with the neighborhood lushes.

Oh! We also sang "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart" in honor of my sister. I was sad to leave Tokyo, but Kyoto is pretty ok.

I love the bullet train.

Bullet train day!

We were hyper and showed up way too early for the train to Kyoto, so now we're hanging out at the end of the station, watching the trains go in and out with all the other camera dorks.

Three days was not nearly enough for amazing Tokyo, but three weeks probably wouldn't have been either. So off we go, reluctantly.

Ok, fake pubs are not exactly the same the world over.

Fake pubs are the same the world over.

Yeah, breakfast!

Kimchi, beef, and rice. You should see the Japanese dudes shovel it in. They can finish one of these in less than two minutes. They'll order, eat, pay and be gone in the time it takes us to fuss with the condiments and drink the soup.

Ginza

 
Man, there is so much stuff you can buy in Ginza, and much of it is very schmancy. We are not so schmancy, so we stuck to low end at the toy store (the *four-story* toy store) and H&M. We also had lunch in a gorgeous tiled beer hall, ate sushi so good I wanted to weep, and walked and walked forever, just looking at everything.

The storm blew through this morning--watching 50 umbrellas blow inside out at once is hilarious, even when yours is one of them--but by noon it was clear and dry and the city looked so damn good in the sunshine.

Yesterday was interesting for sure, but it was also soggy and jet laggy and pretty uncomfortable. It was good to hit our stride today. And supposedly there's more to this place than funny toilets and toy stores, so tomorrow we will try to get some capital-C culture in before we leave for Kyoto on Saturday.

Shinjuku part twoku

Big night in Shinjuku

Well, we're in Tokyo! It took 23 hours and 50 minutes to get from our driveway to the hotel room, so we are a little too weary for exploring just now. But the toilet seat is heated, the baseball game is on (the Nippon Ham Fighters made the championships...whoo?), and the 7-Eleven is two doors down, so we're plenty content to drink a few beers, eat some jerky, and pass out in front of the game. Kind of like at home, but with sports and dried fish.

Bye forever!

We are finally, finally almost done with trip preparations. For the first time this weekend I can actually start looking forward to the trip instead of fretting about boring shit like how many socks to pack.

I still need to print up the itinerary and organize the maps, but other than that we're done. And I never did catch the swine flu, although now it appears there may be a super typhoon heading for mainland Japan this week. Oops.

Well, if we don't get blown away, I'll be posting on the trip from time to time, although not until we get done with our bizarre time-warp of a flight. Due to the magic of time zones, we leave Austin at eight tomorrow morning and land in Tokyo around five on Tuesday evening. For those of you who wish you could just skip Monday, it turns out that you totally can.

Sky test

Test! Test! Don't get testy!

The moon is such a show-off sometimes.

 

I mean, god. It's all like, Oooh, look at me! I'm the moon! I'm all bright and full! Take a picture of me! I'm sooooo beautiful!

Whatever.

You know, I don't think I ever actually read the manual of the Canon S5 I bought last year. It's still a lot bulkier than I'd like (I'd rather have so-so pictures with a cheap camera that's portable than none at all with a nice one that's a pain to carry around), but it's a fucking cool camera.