It has been a complete whirlwind of a trip. I arrived, started a post and here I am two weeks later sitting in Mikkeller in Shibuya all by myself.
Today was stressful. I had planned to return to the USA on standby but all flights except for maybe on Delta to Detroit. I didn’t want to go to Detroit. I woke up, saw that the United flight I had planned to take had zero open seats and I was sinking lower and lower on the standby list as I’d have lowest priority. Having drank a few beers last night I was slightly groggy and had to pack in a hurry as the Delta flight left earlier than the United flight I had scheduled. Before I left we took a look at Zipair and to our surprise there was one ticket to LA on Saturday. However, we couldn’t get all the information entered before it was gone. Repeat the same for a flight to SFO on Saturday. Missing those tickets was heartbreaking due to the fact that a non-revenue ticket looked quite slim for the next few days.
I quickly said my goodbyes and my wife took me to the station. It was on the hour long train to Ikebukuro that I tried using my phone to check Zipair again and another ticket had popped up, this time for SFO on Monday. I didn’t hold out much hope having failed twice already and my connection is slow. But one of the Kami-sama or a deceased relative may have been looking out for me as the transaction went through! That cost me $1,000 but is a small price to pay for a few extra days in Japan, a confirmed seat to where I want to go and a lesson to never, ever try standby when going to Japan in the summer. Lesson learned.
So here I sit in extremely fashionable Shibuya, day drinking and surrounded by a few fashionable women. Shibuya is definitely more upscale than Ikebukuro that is for sure.
I have so much to write regarding the activities of the past two weeks but don’t intend to do that now. Instead here are a few things I’m thinking about.
We rode the Shinkansen to Osaka, then Kyoto and back to Tokyo. As we sped through the countryside I wondered what went on in those small towns along the coast between Shizuoka and Osaka. I wondered what my life might have been like should I have requested to teach English in one of those towns back in 2002? I wouldn’t have as the only city I knew was Tokyo and I wanted to be in a big city. I knew nothing about Japan at that time, it was a strange and exotic place where everything was incomprehensible. Now here I am twenty years later sitting in a bar all by myself. I showed my colleagues around like a tour guide then also was the navigator for my own family two of which are native Japanese!
I’ve always been fascinated by the small towns I pass by on the train. I’m not referring to small towns in America but more specifically towns in France where I wonder if the Nazis marched through, what monuments are there and if the townsfolk themselves even know much about them. The same is true of these towns I was passing by in Japan. There is much history there, and especially in Japan there are temples, shrines and roadside markings which not even the villagers know much or are curious about.
Although I wonder, I do not yearn for a different experience. I have an absolutely wonderful wife and kids and would not want anything different. If I had not chosen Tokyo then I wouldn’t have gone to Waseda and that wouldn’t have lead me to Vietnam and then San Francisco. If I had chosen a small town along the Japanese coast I’m pretty sure I’d still be there and I don’t imagine life there is really much different from the rest of the Japan all things considered. Maybe a little slower, with less people but I’d still be wearing a suite going to the same type of job I’d find in Tokyo. One disadvantage of living in those small towns is that it would take me much longer to get to the airport. I’d have to pay $100 just to get to the airport by train. There would also be a lot less to do. Yet, the allure of history, tranquility and the unknown still holds in those small towns.
I just had a look at the app which shows me the chances of getting on flights back to the USA the next few days. It looks like I definitely made the right decision to buy. I would have gone all the way to Narita today, sat around and then not gotten on the plane. I made a last minute decision to switch to Delta and see they have only 10 open seats with 20 people listed. So if I had gone to Haneda then I’d also still be sitting around and it looks like I wouldn’t have gotten on either.
Another benefit of spending $1,000 for a confirmed flight is that I can now sit in a bar in Shibuya drinking beer and then spend the next couple of days with family instead of stressing in airports all day.
Another item on my mind is that I reached out to a pretty much all of my friends/acquaintances here in Japan and was glad that four responded and two were able to meet. These are people that I have met one time or another over the past twenty years. I’m surprised that some didn’t respond but I guess that comes with the passage of time, changing circumstances, family obligations and so on. However, that is where I differ from others. I’d be happy to meet any of my acquaintances within an hour radius of San Francisco should they reach out to me. I guess I just remember the moments spent together with others better than they do. For me, those moments endure whereas for others they just become faded, unimportant memories.
Well, I think I’ve had enough beer as I have to pee, am feeling pretty good and need to get back to Saitama before too long.
