It's Suntory Time
Apr 11, 10:08 PM
We took off from JFK on Saturday afternoon and landed in Tokyo on Sunday evening after a 4 hour delay courtesy of American Airlines. The non-stop flight was surprisingly tolerable. Sunday evening in Tokyo’s subway system wasn’t overwhelming at all.
The location names, signs and even announcements were all in English leaving me thinking that this wasn’t going to be the overwhelming plunge into cold water that I was expecting. Of course, I had a native pointing the way the whole time… that helped a lot. I listened to The Jesus and Mary Chain on the bus ride home just to get that Lost in Translation feel. We got home and fell asleep quickly.
The next morning we awoke and were on the bullet train by 7:00. When we got off the train in Kyoto, we were told that there was a magnitude 6.0 earthquake while we were traveling. The train didn’t seem to mind at all and did a good job of isolating us from a story to write home about. We hopped on a bus and were soon climbing up a wandering ravine to see the oldest cherry tree in Japan. If I ignore the occasional bamboo groves and the non-stop babbling of the tour guide, the steep mountains and churning white and blue water in the valley here remind me of the Austrian Alps.
Our evening was spent walking around a park called koudaiji (高�寺) filled with Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. The weather had changed and the temperature was dropping quickly. Nevertheless, there were medium sized groups of twenty-something japanese students everywhere sitting on blue tarps, eating, and walking holding hands. Asako and I bought some warm sake and some deep fried treats from one of the many vendors who had come to the park to capitalize on the party.
We retired at the end of the day at a western style hotel that seemed to be filled with foreigners and elderly Japanese women.
