Landing in Tokyo

I am sitting here next to Rusty Taylor, who has just slept through his first "freezing ass night" in Japan that wasn't in a nice warm hotel. We just returned to my neck of the woods on the overnight bus from Tokyo, and we have been lounging and eating and Rusty has been complaining about the general coldness of all things Nakatsugawa. I just know he already misses the bright blinking lights and short skirts of Tokyo. The most exciting thing we have is McDonalds, and he already went there.

Tokyo was a whirlwind tour of beer, shiny things, and riding subways. Rusty described Tokyo as "one big showcase of the things Japan makes." There you have it folks. Actually, we had quite a great time in Japan's capital. I took the train out to meet Rusty at the airport, where we spent approxmiately 45 minutes trying to outsmart his bank account at the foreign ATM. Our hostel was a good find, and it was an outpost of warmness and English speakers in a sea of coldness and Japanese speakers. It was also very cheap.

I introduced the Boy to the bright lights of Tokyo, and we had fun for several days exploring the small restaurants of Tokyo and introducing him to Japanese food. We ate at Yoshinoya for breakfast both days, and the Boy even came to tolerate miso soup, part of the traditional Japanese breakfast. He describes it as "fish brine with seaweed." That sounds like a pretty glowing endorsement to me.

We also stumbled across one of the world's great untapped cheap beer resources, in the form of the Yebisu Beer Museum at the Sapporo beer headquarters. They have a small museum, which is completely in Japanese and really just an excuse to get to the tasting room at the end, where you can purchase $2 coupons for glasses of fresh beer! Despite the museum-ish feel of the bar, you couldn't beat the price and quality.

We explored all around the city for days, browsing in the insanely massive electronics district at Akihabara and the seizure-inducing lights and noise of Shibuya, as well as visiting a whole area whose stores only stock supplies for opening restaurants. We picked up some plastic food displays for gifts back home. I introduced the Boy to Mos Burger, which didn't impress him too much, even though it's my favorite burger joint around here. I think coming from the land of burgers, his standards were too high. He learned to take his shoes off at the door of the hostel (even though when he first saw that he would have to do this, he said, ever the diplomat, "I am not taking my f-ing shoes off." I even taught him some words of Japanese for ordering in restuarants. The boy's "Arigatos" are quite good, I must say.

On our last day there, we were to take the 11:30pm bus back to Nakatsugawa, but unfortunately Tokyo is shutting down for New Years. So we quite literally ran out of things to do by about 4pm. Our only solution was to head back to the hostel, which we had already checked out of, and purchase some beers at the local 7-11 and relax at the hostel for many hours until it was time to go. We spent many happy hours conversing with the other whities before I decided it was time to head to the station, just to be early.

Of course, by this point I had consumed about 4 biggish cans of beer, and so my normally awesome organization abilities were in a somewhat compromised state. As we rode the subway, I took out the bus tickets to inspect them and show them to Rusty. This was the last time I ever saw them. We got to Shinjuku station with about 40 minutes to go, planning on grabbing some McD's before our ride. I stopped to check my things again, and everything was quite in order, except of course for there being no tickets. Concern, with remarkable haste, gave way to sheer mindless panic, and my tipsy mind started racing to horror scenarios of freezing to death on the streets of Tokyo or, worse, of having to pay money for another hotel. I couldn't believe the tickets weren't there. So, in one of the world's busiest train stations, I frantically dragged Rusty to and fro searching for the proper bus terminal so that we could explain how dumb we were to the bus people. Rusty was carrying a 50-pound bag and so was, hmmm, not so happy with me. With 2 minutes before departure, we arrived at the terminal sweating and frantic, and explained that we had lost our tickets. The attendant seemed calm and friendly, and I asked him to hold the bus for us, which he did. I thought everything was hunky-dory, he said something about a $1 fee, and I thought, "My gosh, we're saved." But then he said, "Oh yes yes, Nakatsugawa is only 9000 yen (about $80). I protested, but it didn't seem to be going anywhere. We grudgingly coughed up a lot of money, having already paid for the other tickets, and raced behind an attendant as he parted the seas of people to make way for the drunken, stupid foreigners who lost their tickets. We made it to the bus with not a moment to spare, in fact 5 minutes after it was supposed to leave. I sat on the bus metaphorically kicking myself, because if there are two things I love it's a well-executed plan and a bargain, and both had just decidedly flown out the window. My bargain bus ride had just doubled in price. Doh! I vowed to not eat Mos Burger for a month to make up the difference.

Bottom line: Mission Accomplished. We arrived in my hometown at about 4:30am. Rusty instantly observed that it looked "boring" and that it was -4 degrees celsius. Waaaa. We hiked up to my high school in the fureeeeezing cold and Rusty scraped the ice off my car with a Haagan Daz spoon that I keep on hand for these occasions, while I sat in the warm car and monitored. Eventually I gave him my frequent flier card, which worked much better.

Back home, he was slightly less than overjoyed at the very little difference in temperature between inside and outside my house. I think he would have enjoyed a bigger spread. I fixed us up some futons with electric blankets, and after some time, we hit the sack at about 7am. Rusty was whining like a girl at the cold. I was a man about it.

This afternoon, we're off to Hakuba in Nagano Prefecture for the New Years and skiing tomorrow. We will report back after that, with Volume 2 of 'Rusty in Japan: The Legend Begins"