Honeymoon Trip Day 5 – Venice

  • Aug 13, 2006
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You can see pictures from this day here.

We woke refreshed in Venice to a nice summer day. The sky was blue, and it wasn’t very hot at all. We plunged into the heart of the city to do some serious sightseeing, and I was snapping away with my camera at just about every canal we crossed.

We had seen most of the major sights except for the southern part of town, and when we finally figured out how to get there, we came into an open square and we were stunned. It was a huge open space for such a small cramped city. Dominating the square was St. Mark’s Cathedral, and the open space was surrounded by some very Roman architecture. The square was full of tourists and pigeons, in roughly the same numbers.

We waited in a short line to get into St. Mark’s, and were interested to see that they were turning people away that were wearing short shorts or sleeveless tops. Respect for God, apparently. We climbed to the top of the cathedral, but weren’t allowed to take pictures. We could go out on the balcony and take some pictures, though. The place was vast. The ceiling was painted gold, and there was some pretty amazing artwork everywhere you looked. They had religious artwork made entirely from small colored tiles, and the style was very vibrant – not your typical religious artwork. To get to the artifacts and to look around you had to pay six euros and walk through a souvenir store. Respect for God, apparently.

After looking through the square we caught a boat ride up the canal through the entire city. Up to this point, we had seen Venice from the streets and bridges overlooking the canals, but this was a chance to see the city from the water, which turned out to be an entirely new experience. We didn’t want to pay a hundred dollars an hour to ride a gondola, so the five euros each price of the water transit was much more our speed.

As we lined up to get on the boat, I noticed that there were lots of people trying to jockey around to the front of the line. Some people even walked around to the exit and tried to play stupid until the boat arrived so that they could jump on as people were getting off. Some people in the line caught them and told them to go back, but this was the first time I really noticed what became a trend among tourists during the trip – if you can sneak ahead, go for it.

Luckily we were near the front of the line, and with the experience of riding trains all her life Kuniko grabbed two great seats at the back of the boat for us – the best place to take pictures. The boat was off, and we started enjoying the entirely different scenery along the Grand Canal.

Venice is a sinking city. Sinking gradually, but it really is getting lower. You could see the water lapping at the top of staircases, and even some enormous pumps outside of some buildings as we went along. Some of the houses along the canal were only accessible by water, and there were even a few restaurants that had “parking” for boats right outside.

I took tons of pictures on the ride up the canal. It was a great trip, and I recommend it to anyone traveling to Venice.

We had a late lunch at a restaurant along one of the more touristy areas of town, and although the price and the food were good, the waiters were a little pushy and rude, and they even tried to pressure Kuniko into tipping. We decided to screw them for the tip and get out of there. That’ll probably only make them more pushy and rude next time, but still – come on. Be nice, and things will go your way.

We gathered up our gear, and headed to the train station to move on to the next destination – Florence. The whole trip we had been buying sodas whenever we were thirsty, and we stocked up again before the trip. We also bought some sandwiches for dinner to eat on the train. My soda turned out to be a weird one – I don’t know what flavor it was, but I couldn’t drink it.

Sodas were expensive in Europe. Everywhere you went you could buy sodas, but the prices varied wildly. If you were lucky enough to find them cold in a supermarket (usually they only had room temperature ones) they sold for about 1 Euro (about $1.30). If you bought it off a street vendor the price went to anywhere from 2 Euros to 4 Euros – that’s more than five dollars for a soda! We burned a lot of cash buying drinks and gelatos on the trip – if I was doing it all over again I would bring my own water along. It wouldn’t be cold, but it would be cheaper.

On the train to Florence we sat with a nice couple from America. Most of the Americans we bumped into on this trip were the loud, obnoxious kind, but these two were really cool people. They were in their early 50’s, and they were spending a month in Europe traveling around. We talked and talked and compared experiences. It was nice to have a positive experience with some Americans – and it made the time fly by much quicker.

We got into Florence after 9 p.m., and made our way to the hotel using our guidebook’s map. The way seemed simple enough, because the hotel was near a large cathedral. We walked along the busy streets, looking for a large cathedral, but the buildings were so tall and close together that we ended up having to consult the map quite a bit. Also the streets were full of vendors and party-goers – it was a wild night. There was trash everywhere from what looked like a parade, and we couldn’t understand very much of what was being said around us. It was a very “lost in a foreign country” feel that we both had, and so we were glad when we finally found a large cathedral.

Unfortunately, its position didn’t match up with the map, and after we walked a little more we turned a corner and stopped in our tracks. Now that’s a big cathedral. We had found the Duomo, and words can’t describe the size of this thing. It was hidden behind all the buildings, and so closely surrounded that you couldn’t back up and take a picture. As Kuniko said, it was so big that it was scary.

We walked around the frighteningly large cathedral and soon found the door to our hotel. It was a giant wooden door, with just a speaker and an array of buttons. We pushed the button for our hotel, but the revelry outside was too loud to hear any response. We finally got them to open the gate electronically, and then we stepped inside.

Inside the gate was a dark courtyard, so dark that we didn’t know if we were walking into a warehouse or a storage room. It was spooky. We used my mini-flashlight and found a staircase, and then we walked up the dark stairs until we found another door with the name of the hotel. We knocked there, and a nice young man opened the door and introduced himself. We led us up one more flight of stairs, and opened the door to show us to our room.

The next room was like a living room/waiting room. It was huge, with tall ceilings. Probably four times bigger than our apartment back in Japan. And this was just the waiting room. He led us down a hallway into another room that had a small staircase leading to a door halfway up the wall. We went inside and there was our room. It was big, too. The bedroom was about the size of our entire apartment back home. There were three beds, a double and two singles. It was nice, but uncomfortably large. The bathroom was clean and nice, so we unloaded our stuff and then slept with the lights on that night. On a whim I left open the shutters to our windows, and then we went to sleep. Another big day.

Honeymoon Trip Day 4 – Venice

  • Aug 12, 2006
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You can see pictures from this day here.

Kuniko and I were both up early – we really didn’t sleep much on the trip. We looked at the train ticket and found that our stop was coming up in about 20 minutes, so we grabbed our stuff and got ready to leave. The conductor came by and gave us our passports back, and then we went over to the exit to try to get off as soon as the train stopped.

The twenty minutes came and went and finally, the train slowed to a stop. Unfortunately, it wasn’t where we wanted to be – it was a tiny stop outside Florence. We waited again, and it was almost another 20 minutes before we arrived at the station in Florence – Firenze di Campo.

We got off the train, and started looking for the next train to take us to Venice. Bad news – it wasn’t there. In fact, we weren’t even at the right station. Sure we had arrived in Florence, but it wasn’t the right station in Florence. We had to figure out the situation, stress over tickets, get on a slow train to go two stops, and then we were in the correct station.

As I figured out later, the long distance overnight train stops just outside the major terminals to clean up and restock, and then it pulls into the big terminal empty and ready to go. They don’t want to have to try to clean it at the main station with people getting on early and all the hassle that goes along with that. It makes sense, but at the time we were completely lost. After having a rough night on the overnight train, we weren’t in great moods and again there was nothing to be done but curse the Eurail company for not telling us about making these connections.

Luckily, the next train was a fast, clean train and we had first class tickets. Unfortunately for the people sitting next to us, we didn’t look too good, and we didn’t smell great, either. No showers on the overnight trains, and I probably wouldn’t have wanted to use it if there was one.

It was about three hours to Venice from Florence, and so Kuniko and I got caught up on sleep, enjoyed free coffee and snacks delivered by a steward, and took in the scenery. The time passed quickly. On this trip we were surrounded by an American family doing a family vacation. The boy and his father traded insults as they played cards, and the mother and daughter discussed the things they wanted to buy once they arrived. It was nice to be able to chat with Kuniko in private right in front of them – language, it’s a beautiful thing.

We arrived in Venice and it was amazing. You take a railroad bridge over a large body of water, and then show up in a modern train station. After you leave the train station, the Grand Canal is right there in front of you – it’s a dramatic entrance. Everywhere I looked I wanted to take a picture. The canals, the old buildings, the boats, the people – it was completely different from everything we had seen so far in France.

One thing we discovered right away, it’s easy to get lost in Venice. The streets can get very narrow, and if it weren’t for some well placed signs we would still be there looking for the way out. Everywhere you went you passed tourists consulting maps and trying to figure out how to get somewhere. Kuniko worked out how to get to our hotel, and it wasn’t too long before we were walking towards it.

I had done a lot of research on the hotel and picked out a room via the website – so I was eager to see if it met my expectations. Kuniko looked at the one star rating on the sign and was a little worried, but once we saw the room we were happy.

The room was right on the canal – you just open the door/window and there was a boat and water right outside. That made for some nice moments when gondolas would pass by with the gondola man singing or playing music – it sounded like they might come inside our room. The floor was tile and the bathroom was nice and spacious. It was a really nice room.

We were kind of worn out so we did just a little bit of sightseeing that day. We ate calzones for lunch, and ended up having dinner in our room – some pizza, a panini sandwich, a rolled sandwich, and a bottle of Cote D’Or chardonnay that we smuggled out of Dijon and drank right from the bottle. We went out just one more time to take some evening pictures, but the skies started to threaten so we came back to our room just in time to avoid a late night rain shower. It was nice to fall asleep with the rain hitting the water of the canal right outside our window. All in all a much more pleasant evening than the night before.

Honeymoon Trip Day 3 – Dijon

  • Aug 11, 2006
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You can see pictures from this day here.

Dijon turned out to be a really cool town. I originally picked it because it was near a famous wine region, it was along the main train route to Italy, and because I wanted to check out a French town that wasn’t as big as Paris but still with plenty to do.

Dijon worked out nicely. We started off with showers in the morning, and we had some really strange old towels to use. I think they were just old, but I couldn’t quite explain the texture – call it a weird experience. They were clean, though, and that’s what mattered.

After checking out of our hotel and leaving our backpacks with the main desk we set out to explore Dijon. The town was bustling with tourism, but not quite like Paris was. There were plenty of shops to look at. We started by going into a small bakery and buying an assortment of breads. We didn’t know how to pronounce the breads that we wanted, so Kuniko came up with an ingenious idea – she wrote down the names of the breads from the price tags in the case, and then we just handed over the paper with a smile. The clerk laughed and laughed – she thought it was the funniest thing ever. But, we got the bread that we wanted, and then we went to a small square to eat them and do some sightseeing.

Dijon had a morning farmer’s market going, and so we walked around looking at merchandise. There was a big emphasis on fruits and vegetables, but there was also plenty of mustard, meat, cheese, wine, and chocolate.

It was a good day – we shopped without really buying much. We skipped lunch because we were full of bread and instead drank espressos and later wine at cafes and bars. I found a shoe store that had a nice pair of hiking boots in my size, so I picked those up, and left my old shoes in the garbage can in a park – hopefully a homeless guy can get some use out of them.

In the early evening it started sprinkling, and we discovered that the cheap-o umbrella (dubbed Troy Jr. by Kuniko) that we had bought for five Euros was defective. We opened it and it fell right off the stem. We were forced to buy another umbrella (Troy the Third) and that kept us dry until we could sneak into a restaurant for dinner at seven p.m.

The dinner that night was our last in France, so we had searched the guidebook until we found one that looked suitable for a farewell meal. It turned out to be a great restaurant – it was underground under a vaulted ceiling, and we had a waitress that spoke English who could explain things to us. We had two set meals that had five courses each. That combined with a bottle of local Pinot Noir and we were in heaven. The dinner was the nicest one I think we had the whole trip. Kuniko got to eat Foie Gras, I had duck, and there was enough cheese to tide us over until we come back to France or shop at Carrefour back home.

After dinner we hauled our stuffed bellies to the train station, and waited there for an overnight train to take us to Venice by way of Florence. The train was due in around 9:30, so we made it there with about 20 minutes to spare. They had a nice diagram on the wall to show us where to stand to get on the correct coach – a touch that was very Japanese. We sat there waiting for the train, not knowing what to expect. This was our first time sleeping on a train overnight.

When the train arrived none of the numbers matched with the diagram. Maybe not so Japanese after all. We were standing far from where we were supposed to be. We didn’t know how long they were stopping, so it was a frantic run to the correct car. We jumped on board and found the right room. We were the last of six people to arrive in the tiny car, and our bunks were on the very top. We were sharing the room with a couple of French college students, and a husband and wife that looked Indian or Pakistani.

Where do I begin? It was awful. First, here we are on our honeymoon and we’re trapped in a room the size of our bedroom back home with four strangers. A long time ago I booked a private room, but due to some kind of error with Eurail’s website I had no choice left but to switch to this set-up. I remember the Eurail person on the phone telling me reassuringly, “It’s like a hostel on a train!” It was exactly like that, and I don’t mean that in a good way.

We threw our luggage up onto the top rack, climbed a ladder to get to our separate bunks, and then were given a blanket and a pillow by the French lady sleeping below. Then, the conductor came by to check our tickets. He asked to see our passports, and then left with them. Kuniko and I looked at each other and panicked – first rule of travel, don’t give up your passport. How did we even know that guy was really the conductor? Kuniko went down the hall and the guy assured her that he’d give it back before we arrived. I did some research in the Eurail handbook, and found a small paragraph in the back that said that occasionally this situation might occur, and it was perfectly normal. In short, it was not the romantic night I was hoping for when I booked the trip months ago, and we sat isolated from each other surrounded by strangers while the train rocked and rolled through the night.

It was tough to sleep at first. Everyone in the other cabins seemed to be loud and wanting to party. There was at least one poker game going, and people kept telling stories of their travels over and over again. The bathroom was a mess already, and so finally I just decided to try to sleep. It was tough to sleep, though. It was hard to get used to the noise of the train, and being on the top bunk was a little scary, too. It was a long way down. The French couple whispered to each other in French below us, the Pakistani couple whispered to each other in Pakistani, and Kuniko and I spoke in Japanese – everybody was having a private conversation at least.

Finally, the lights went out, we were bathed in a blue glow from the night light, and we had nothing left to do but try to sleep through it. For me it was the worst night of the trip, by far. I could only curse the Eurail website and remember that no matter how slow it was going, there was a finite amount of time until we arrived in Venice.

Honeymoon Trip Day 2 – Paris

  • Aug 10, 2006
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You can see pictures from this day here.

We had a chance to sleep in just a bit in the morning, and then we checked out of the hotel and hoofed it around Paris all day. The weather in Paris was beautiful. It was much cooler than I was led to believe – a great vacation from the heat and humidity of a Japanese summer.

Since the weather was so great we had no problem wandering all over the place. We saw Notre Dame – a huge old cathedral on an island on the Seine river in the middle of Paris. We went to St. Chappelle, another cathedral, this one heavy on the stained glass. We also visited the Concierge, a converted prison that housed people considered dangerous to the government in the time of the French Revolution.

We covered Paris pretty well in two days. We ate and ate – did I mention the food was incredible? For lunch I had a chili shrimp risotto, and Kuniko had a steak with a bleu cheese sauce, and combined with wine and French bread we were completely satisfied. I was starting to wonder if we should be spending more time in France and less in Italy, just based on the food.

In the evening we headed to the train station to make our next journey, this time to Dijon in the Cote D’Or region. We arrived at the train station a little early, so we killed time drinking at a café, and then headed over to catch an early dinner at a small restaurant nearby. We had salads this time, and switched to white wine for a change. The early dinner was nice since we’d be on the train during the traditional dinner time.

The train system in Europe was touted as being modern, efficient, and easy to use. I’ll give them modern, but barely. Compared to Japan, Europe has a long way to go. Still, compared to America, I’d say they are pretty nice. We worked out the system, but combined with all the rules on how to use the rail pass that I had bought, it was a little complicated. Luckily our first trip was a short one, under three hours, and the train was fast and comfortable.

This might be a good point to tell you about language, specifically ours. Kuniko and I are lucky enough to be able to speak two languages reasonably well, and that made the honeymoon trip much more fun. Mainly we spoke in Japanese this trip because it gave us privacy most of the time. If we were around Japanese people we would switch to English. It made communication really easy for the duration of the trip, and the privacy came in handy sometimes.

On the train we had mostly French people around us, so it didn’t matter which language we used. Later on we were stuck on trains with people that spoke English, and it was nice to be able to speak together without being understood.

Our train arrived in Dijon in the evening around 9 p.m., that is, in the middle of dinnertime for most people. We were able to find our hotel, this time a place that was a restaurant that had converted the upstairs into hotel rooms. The room was clean and comfortable, and we went right to sleep – again lots of walking around had us tired out pretty early.

Honeymoon Trip Day 1 – Paris

  • Aug 09, 2006
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You can see pictures from this day here.

The first day we left for the airport wearing only our backpacks, and we used the time to get used to the packs. We didn’t have much break-in time, but mine was really comfortable and carried the 10 kilos inside without a problem. Kuniko’s pack was bothering her shoulder a little bit, but by the end of the trip there was no problem at all. We returned a library book at Akashi library on the way to the airport, and then got to the airport and took off for Bangkok.

We had quite a bit of time to kill in Bangkok airport. The flight to Bangkok was 5 hours, but we had almost 8 hours to kill once we arrived. The airport seemed almost set up for that situation, though. They had a huge building full of shopping, food, and amenities. We ate some airport-authentic Thai food and it was great – cheap, spicy, delicious. We didn’t want to buy anything since we would have to pack it the whole trip – so we made a list of things we wanted to buy for the return flight.

Eight hours is a long time to kill, but we managed to do it. The airport was full of interesting people. The people were from many different countries – there were shieks and woman dressed in black head-to-toe robes. With all the different cultures walking around it made it fun to observe what people were doing. Bangkok has a lot of native fruits that were selling really cheaply, so we drank fruit juices from fruits that we had never heard of, and finally in the evening we were ready to go.

The next flight was a 10 hour flight to Paris. That went really easily, since we were both so tired from staying up eating and drinking and shopping at the Bangkok airport. We both went right to sleep – I slept through take-off which was a first for me. I vaguely remember somebody waking me up to ask me what I wanted to eat, and I think I looked around stupidly wondering where the hell I was. Later we managed to get some food, though, and we slept for most of the flight.

We arrived in Paris around 8 in the morning, and by the time we caught the shuttle bus into the city it was around 9. They dropped us off right next to the Arc de Triomphe, and we were on the ground and sightseeing from then until the end of the day.

Paris was an interesting city. Right away you could tell that it was old, but a different kind of old than Japan. The layout of the city and the buildings were really different than American cities, and I found myself interested in the simplest things, like the amount of cafes per block and how buildings jutted out into the street occasionally.

Our next stop was the Eiffel Tower, and our timing couldn’t have been better. We were in line to go to the top just a few minutes before they opened, and we got up to the top in just a few minutes. The view from the top was excellent, and I took lots of pictures from up there, as well as plenty around the base. I went kind of crazy with pictures – I came home with just under one thousand pictures taken on the trip.

After the Eiffel Tower we stopped in at a café for some sandwiches. It was our first experience trying to speak with French people, and luckily we had a nice waitress who was patient and smiled with us as we tried to order. I kept smiling for the whole trip, and that ended up being my most effective communication tool.

It was amazing how much nicer people where if you greeted them in their language, and then asked them if they spoke English in their language. Combined with a big smile, we hardly ever met anyone who wouldn’t smile back and try to help us.

We did lots of sightseeing in Paris the rest of the day. We went to the Louvre museum and saw, among many other famous paintings, the Mona Lisa. The museum was huge, and I think we really only scratched the surface.

In the afternoon we found our hotel and got set up there, dropped off our backpacks, and then had a mind-blowing delicious meal for dinner at a small restaurant that we found. Throughout France and Italy we noticed that people had dinner much later than what we were used to. Most places opened for dinner between 7-8 p.m., and we were used to eating around 5-6 p.m. The place on the first night opened up a little early for us, and we had a feast. We had an avocado salad for an appetizer, and Kuniko had a four cheese fondue while I had a steak. Everything was great – the cheese fondue was off the scale for cheesiness, and we drank a half liter of wine and had all the free French bread that we could eat.

Ordering wine in Paris was fun. Of course you could order by bottle or glass, but they had a cool system where you chose the wine region you wanted to drink, and then they delivered a little pitcher of the wine that you could pour yourself.

On the way back to the hotel we ate some gelato, stopped at a grocery store to marvel at the low low prices of cheese and wine, and then retired with sore feet from walking all over the city. It was a big first day.

Update, Signing Off

  • Aug 07, 2006
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It’s been a while since I’ve updated the site! I’ve been busy saying goodbye to people, and getting the last of the boxes unpacked at home while packing for the trip to Europe. Tomorrow we’re heading to the airport, and so I’m just trying to get everything ready around here so that things will be OK while we’re gone.

Kuniko has continued on her schedule from hell, and tonight around 7 she’ll be coming home and she’ll be able to enjoy our trip.

This weekend Kuniko has been away on a work trip – staying with her students at some kind of seminar house and teaching them effective ways to study English. I’ve been caught in a weird situation where I don’t want to buy groceries that will end up getting weird in the refrigerator while we’re gone, so Saturday night I went out with Struan for his last fling in Akashi.

Antoine was also able to show up, and so we joined Struan and two of his Japanese friends in touring all of Struan’s favorite drinking holes. His friends were funny – one guy looked like Carlos Santana. He didn’t speak very much English, so he just repeated the English that he did know – over and over. At first it was funny, but by the end of the night it was getting a little old.

His other friend was learning English and was pretty good – he acted as our interpreter for the evening. He had the odd habit of suddenly saying vulgar things in English very loud, maybe to get a reaction out of everyone. I’d give examples, but this is a family website. If you want the details, ask me. This behavior also was hysterically funny at first, but soon got old. The more he drank the more uninhibited he became.

We hit a couple of places – but I don’t usually go to either of them. They have this weird foreigner vibe – there is something shady about them. Antoine was picking up the same vibe, so with Struan leaving there’s no real reason to go to either of them again. Everybody was nice, but just something odd.

One of the owners was recently released for jail for a hit and run accident he did while under the influence of marijuana, so that gives you an idea of the crowd we were hanging with.

Antoine and I didn’t have a chance to eat dinner before, so we snuck out of went down the street to eat ramen noodles from the back of a truck that had parked on a street corner. The guy there was really nice, and we sat at the makeshift tables and eat hot steaming noodles while people walked by. It was one of those experiences I always wanted to do in Japan, and here it is three years into my stay and I finally get it done.

We walked back and met up with the gang again, and this time they had added a few girls to the group. One girl was (according to Struan) a very popular girl with many of the local foreigners. She was enjoying the attention hanging out with us. The other girl was wearing a yukata after visiting a local festival, and she had us pose for lots of pictures with her.

This is why I don’t like going to foreigner bars – the kind of people that go there are just interested in meeting foreign people, and so the whole experience is about that, rather than making any genuine friendships.

Anyway, by the time Antoine and I were ready to go it was long past the last train, so we took a taxi to Okubo. Carlos Santana covered our bar tab for the night, which was pretty significant, so with the financial windfall we could afford to split the cab fare. Antoine stayed at the apartment overnight, and the next morning we went out for McDonald’s for breakfast, and then caught a movie at the theater since we had some time to kill. Finally Antoine went home in the afternoon, so I went home and did some cleaning, packing and laundry.

For dinner I decided to try a local yakitori, so I went to one that looked interesting, but unfortunately it was closed. Then I walked back towards home and found another yakitori that looked good. I sat at the end of the bar of the pretty small place, and ordered up some food and beer. The beers came out in frozen mugs, the yakitori food was great, although not as good as Denya.

I drank about four beers and was about ready to leave when a guy came in and sat next to me and struck up a conversation. It turns out he is a regular and he owns a ramen shop in Akashi. We kept on talking and found out that his restaurant is in some kind of advertising partnership with the yakitori we were eating at in Okubo, and a third place – Denya yakitori in Futami. He showed me a poster advertising all three places – and I had seen the same poster in Denya back in Futami. It turns out that everybody knew everybody, and so it was almost like I was transferring my local status from Futami to here.

The guy Hayashi-san, bought me some drinks and we talked a lot. I had already had my fill of drinks before he came in, but it seemed rude to turn down his drinks. Finally I said my goodbyes and promised to come back. He was a really nice guy, and it was a good test of my Japanese – especially when I was drunk.

I made it home and went to bed totally drunk – what a night. Two of those in a row, and I’m tired out. Kuniko and I will both be tired for different reasons when we leave tomorrow.

Here’s the itinerary for the honeymoon trip, in case we disappear and never return. We’ll be flying to Bangkok tomorrow, and after a layover with arrive in Paris in the morning on Wednesday. We’ll spend the night in Paris on Wednesday the 9th, and then the next night we’ll take the train to Dijon and spend the night there. On the 11th we’ll take a night train to Venice, and spend the night of the 12th in Venice. We’ll stay in Florence the night of the 13th and 14th, and in Rome the night of the 15th and 16th. The night of the 17th we’ll take a night train back to Paris, and we’ll fly back on the 17th passing through Bangkok on our way home to Osaka.

Well, that’s it. Wish us luck on the trip and I’ll write lots more once we get home. I’m sure I’ll have tons of boring vacation pictures to post, too. See you then!

That’s Enough

  • Aug 04, 2006
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Yesterday I spent the day with Brenda, Yamamoto sensei and Tsutsumi sensei. We ran around running errands in order to get Brenda settled in. It was the second day I spent in the company of my replacement, and it was an interesting day.

We started in the morning with me coming over to meet her at the teacher apartments in Futami so that I could teach her how to use the train to get to school on her own.

She asked me to come in and help with explaining a few things, and it was a great indicator of how much I’ve settled in here – I was shocked to see her walk into her apartment with her shoes still on. I was there for 30 seconds and I took my shoes off at the door without even thinking about it.

She’s in the middle of unpacking, and the place in a little bit of disarray, but she made good progress in just one day – she should be all settled in after a week or so.

I took her to the train station and showed her how to buy tickets and money saver passes, but I had this feeling that she wasn’t really paying attention. That feeling persisted throughout the day. We got on the train, and told her where to get off the train, and what landmarks to watch for. Unfortunately she kept talking through the trip and really didn’t look out the window. When we arrived she said that she had hadn’t really paid attention, but she was pretty sure she could figure it out next time.

She would ask me a questions about the job or the lifestyle in Japan, but she had an odd habit of taking whatever I say and confirming that she already figured that was the case and then moving on to another question. Her questions didn’t seem to be the right ones, either. For example, she would ask questions like, “What is the school’s goal?” or “Can I go to Singapore on the school trip?” or “Where is Kyoto?” I just tried to show her how to get the information, or who the person was to talk to.

I could see that I was reaching my exposure limit for Brenda, so I was looking forward to ending this day and getting back to my life of leisure and unpacking at home.

At school she met the principal, and he said some really nice things about me – he spoke in Japanese, of course, and Yamamoto sensei translated for Brenda. The gist of the conversation was that she should really try to be as good a teacher as I was, and I was quite flattered to hear it.

Back in the teacher’s room Brenda met some more people, and we got her hooked up on the computer. She was a little intimidated because the computer is a Japanese operating system, but she’ll get used to it quickly.

We gathered the troops and headed from the school to the city offices in Akashi – we applied for her foreigner card, and she called her folks from a payphone to say that she had arrived safely and was doing well.

In the afternoon we went to Nitori – one of my favorite household item stores. I thought she would find some good stuff there, and I was right – she bought a ton of stuff. On the way back to her place they dropped me off at Saty in Okubo, so I said a quick goodbye and then walked home to relax in air conditioned comfort.

I had some leftover cheese and crackers for dinner, and then went out to the station and met Kuniko as she arrived home from her co-worker drinking party. We came on back home and crashed right out – it was a long day.

Today I’m home alone all day, so I can get some laundry done, start packing for Europe (pack light!) and run to Akashi to pick up a library book.

New ALT Arrives

  • Aug 02, 2006
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Yesterday I spent the latter half of the day helping the new ALT, Brenda, get settled in.

It was all good memories when I arrived at Yashiro with Tsutsumi sensei and Yamamoto sensei to receive the new ALT. They changed the format a little bit, so it’s not so tough on the new ALTs, which was very nice. I noticed that I was not the only foreigner sitting among the Japanese teachers – there were two other guys hanging out. I didn’t recognize them but both were bigger and sweatier than I.

When they called our school’s name we went up and met Brenda. First impression was that she looked older than her age of 24. She reminded me of someone, but I’m not exactly sure who. She had three big suitcases, so we carted them off to the car and left for school.

She peppered me with questions for the hour long ride back, and as soon as we arrived at school it was rushing her around meeting people and doing paperwork. I enjoyed the experience – watching it from the outsider’s perspective is much more fun.

We took her to her apartment, and she looked less than thrilled, especially with the bathtub situation. Soon after we took her to the 100 yen store to stock the place, and then Ito Yokado and Carrefour for sheets and other things that she would need in the short term.

Finally we had a late dinner at an okonomiyaki restaurant. She did fine with okonomiyaki, and just looked a little overwhelmed. I knew how she felt – so I volunteered to help out a little more on Thursday.

One moment that stood out was when she went to Ito Yokado to buy breakfast. She couldn’t read any of the labels – and didn’t know what section had what items – completely lost. It was then that it truly realized how much I’ve picked up since coming here. The flip side of that will be in a couple of days when we’re walking around France and Italy and trying to figure everything out there – lots of different cultures and situations!

She seems flexible, though, and we’ll see if she can weather the initial storm and go on to greatness at school. I hope so!

No Shoes

  • Aug 01, 2006
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The last couple of days have had me traveling around a little bit looking for shoes that fit. My idea was that I could get a new pair of hiking shoes for the upcoming trip – we’ll be walking quite a bit and I want to make sure that my shoes are up to it.

To make a long story short, I confirmed what I already knew – nothing in my size is out there. I did find some shoes in a US size 11, but I really wear a 12 or 13, and I don’t want to squeeze my feet like that. It’s time for another overseas trip for shoes.

While I was running around yesterday I bought some Euros at my bank in preparation for the trip. What strange looking money – just as colorful and almost the same size as Monopoly money. That’ll take some getting used to.

I did find one good thing yesterday – ravioli. It was on a shelf in an import food store in Kobe, and so I took it home and cooked it up for Kuniko for dinner when she came home. She got home at a reasonable hour, and she also had time to get her hair done on the way home. It looks really good – you’ll see it once I post the vacation pictures when we get back.

Today I’m going to go back to Takasago Minami to meet up with some English teachers and then take a trip to Yashiro to meet the new ALT. I remember clearly getting off the bus in Yashiro three years ago with Antoine beside me cracking jokes. The sound of cicadas was really loud, and I remember wondering what that horrible screeching noise was. Then they lined us up like we were being picked for peewee baseball. That was weird, and now I get to see it from another perspective.

I’ll get home late tonight because I’m going to help her get settled in. The week is going by quickly – before you know it it’ll be time to leave for the airport.

Home Alone

  • Jul 31, 2006
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Kuniko was up early and gone this morning. I woke up with her and made some quick breakfast, tried to help out wherever I could, and said goodbye at the door. She looked really tired, and a little frustrated with having so little time for herself.

Meanwhile, I’m playing the stay-at-home-husband today. I did some laundry early and hung it out to dry, and I’ll do a little bit of shopping across the street at Jusco later on.

Speaking of Jusco – this place has an interesting feel to it. I haven’t spent much time in the midwest, but this place looks to me like a tiny supermarket that you’d find in North Dakota somewhere. It’s shaped like a big igloo or quonset hut, and you can just imagine walking there in the snow, kicking the snow off your boots, and then going inside to buy groceries for the family back home. Except they probably don’t sell boiled octopus in North Dakota supermarkets. Maybe, who knows?

I really like the feel of the place, and since it is right across the street and it’s open until midnight, we’ll be regulars there just like we were at Ito Yokado. So far the people have been nice and friendly, and only once was I accosted by a drunk old lady trying to get me to buy eggs because they were only 99 yen a box.

Anyway, Jusco (pronounced JAS-CO) will figure prominently in my daily writings from now on – I’ll try to take a picture of it next time I’m walking by.

Today I’m going to the bank to buy some Euros for our trip, and I was considering a run to Carrefour because in the back of my mind I thought that they sometimes had large shoe sizes there. I don’t know if it’s worth a trip or not, though.

I got a new kanji program for the Nintendo DS, so I’ve been playing a little bit. The bad news is that they assume that you are Japanese and have already studied kanji at least through elementary school. That makes it a little challenging. The good news is that they test everything, and they do it in a fun way, and already my kanji writing skills have improved. I’m hoping if I stick with it I will improve steadily. It’s embarrassing how bad my writing is.

Well, more later. For now I’m off to clean house and do a little bit of studying.

She Works Hard For The Money

  • Jul 30, 2006
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Well, despite what I said the other day about there being not much to write about… in fact, there is.

Sunday Kuniko went off to work early in the morning for her tea ceremony session with her students, and so I had all day to kill by myself. The weather was brilliant – sunny and clear. It was hot, too, so that factored into my plans a little and I decided to skip a hiking trip that I had considered for fear of heatstroke.

I hit the road to Akashi in the late morning on a quest to do something I hadn’t done in a long time – get a library card.

The Akashi city library is located right in the middle of the city park, built on top of and around the ruins of the Akashi castle. The park is beautiful, and I’m very happy to be living a little closer to it now. I walked through the park after leaving the station, and there were all kinds of activities going on. There was a traditional dance competition that was quite large – teams of people in costumes practiced together all over the place, and then there was a big stage in the middle of the big grassy area in the front of the park for them to perform on. There was TV coverage as well, so it was pretty involved.

In the park’s baseball stadium high school teams were playing each other to represent the area in the all-Japan high school championship held every year over at the Hanshin Tigers’ stadium – Koshien park.

I walked through all the commotion and climbed the hill that used to make up the backside of the castle foundation, heading towards the library. The walk was nice, and as always I felt that tinge of “Wow, I’m in Japan!” as I walked through the forest being buzzed by dragonflies and butterflies, crossing Japanese-style bridges along the way.

Finally I reached the library – about a 10 minute walk from the station, but it felt like it was in the middle of nowhere. I’ve only explored a small portion of the library – there is an academic section that I haven’t really looked at as well as some special rooms and even a restaurant.

I worked with a nice lady who helped me get up with a library card, checked out my first book (Dick Francis’ 10 lb. Penalty in Japanese) and even helped me reserve another book that I want to read. The only downside to all this is that the check-out time is around three weeks, which is no problem for English books but a little tough for Japanese. It beats buying books at the store all the time, though.

After the library I walked back to town, did a quick search for shoes (my size not available) and finally grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed home.

In a very pleasant surprise Kuniko got home around 4:30 in the afternoon – which is pretty early for her, even on a Sunday. We relaxed around the house and then decided to go out to dinner to celebrate – she hasn’t had much time off at all lately. She’ll be working right up until the day we leave for Europe – it’s a tight schedule. She’s only had a few days off last month, and those days we were moving. In an effort to relieve the stress we went to an Italian restaurant across the street from our place for dinner.

The place had a good atmosphere, and wasn’t so busy. Even though it wasn’t packed, food came at a very leisurely pace, and it was a good thing we weren’t starving. We had a octopus and vegetable salad that was really good, a pasta with gorgonzola cream sauce, and a cheese pizza with various cheeses on it – really tasty.

We walked off the dinner by patrolling Saty and Vivre, and finally came home and hit the sack. Tomorrow is Monday, and Kuniko will be leaving early to fight in the trenches again.

Unpacking, Ex-student, No TV

  • Jul 29, 2006
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Saturday Kuniko had to go into work, and since I am unemployed it didn’t feel like anything special to stay home all day. There isn’t much to tell you about. I worked on unpacking all day, did some laundry, and made one shopping trip.

The shopping trip was to get some super sunlight-reducing curtains for the bedroom. The morning sun seems to shine right in and heat the place up early in the morning. Luckily I found some good curtains that looked like they’d do the trick. I had a little trouble with the dimensions – the kanji for height and width were some that I hadn’t seen before. Luckily when I got them back and hung them up they look fine.

I bumped into one of my ex-students with her mother on the way back. I said a quick hello in Japanese and greeted me back and kept moving. I used to be surprised how often my father, an elementary school teacher, would run into ex-students. I now seemed to be doomed to the same fate.

I bought some upscale groceries on the way home, and made a big avocado and ham sandwich for lunch. I washed it down with an Australian beer that I found in Vivre (Victoria Bitter) and then went on cleaning up the house.

It went like that for the rest of the day until Kuniko got home, and then I served up a cold salad for dinner and we sat and talked about each other’s day. We had to drive to Saty and drop off the mistaken furniture – they took it back, embarrassed, and didn’t so much as offer us a parking voucher. Kuniko bought some fabric for her tea ceremony event on Sunday, and also we got a DVD, even though we don’t even have a TV.

We gave our TV to Brenda, so now there is a great big hole in the living room. Actually, there are two holes – we gave away our sofa, too. We sit on the floor in the empty living and stare at the corner. To rub it in, we’ve got a whole rack of DVDs to watch, but nothing to watch them on. We had planned since before our wedding to get a new TV after we moved, and we’ll probably get it soon after we get back from our vacation. We both want a plasma TV, and the prices have been falling recently so it might be a good time to get one. Big, big, big!

Since I’m going to be doing not much at all over the next week or so, I’ll fill in the time by describing the new neighborhood, instead of describing in detail what boxes I unpacked lately. I like the neighborhood, and there are some really interesting things to write about.

Bum

  • Jul 28, 2006
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Today I got up early with Kuniko even though I really didn’t have to. There was nobody expecting me at work today and I had no special plans – just build furniture and unpack the boxes that are laying around the bedroom and living room.

I started by building the bookshelves that we’ll be using in the living room for DVDs. The instructions were well illustrated, and even though everything was in Japanese I was able to work out what I needed to do. It took about 30 minutes to build, and afterwards I loaded it up with DVDs and it looks pretty good.

Next I brought in the laundry storage rack that we had bought. This sucker was heavy. After I opened it I saw why – there were two boxes inside the one single box. They had given us two laundry racks for the price of one. It was a 7000 yen mistake – I had only paid for the one piece. Now we’ll have to drive back there and give them back the extra one. I like laundry racks but we don’t need two.

After building all the furniture I went to the post office to mail some stuff, and then did some shopping at Jasco and came home. I ate a chicken bento that was on sale across the street. It was good, but not so healthy. If I’m going to be properly unemployed for the month of August I’m going to have to come up with some cheap meals for lunch. I picked up some lunchmeat so I can make sandwiches, and maybe I’ll have that for lunch starting tomorrow.

I finally got the internet connection up and running and spent some time catching up on e-mail and seeing what is happening out in the world. We don’t have a TV now, and without the internet connection I had no idea what was going on. Luckily, not much new.

I also got a chance to talk with my folks on the phone. They had a great trip to Idaho recently, and it was nice to hear about the good times they had. I gave them our new information, and here it is for you:

312-1-301 Okubo
Okubo-cho Akashi-shi Hyogo-ken
Japan 674-0051

Our phone number is 078-935-2825

Well, I’m back to unpacking and doing some laundry while there is some sun out. Tonight is Friday night but I think we’ll be taking it easy and resting up. Kuniko has to work both Saturday and Sunday, so we’ll need to take some rest whenever we can get it.

Last Day At Takanan, Goodbye Carrie

  • Jul 27, 2006
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I went into Futami around 9:30 in the morning and met up with two members of my office staff to check out of the old apartment. We had to wait for a member of the prefectural government to come out and check the condition of the apartment, and so we shot the breeze for a while until he showed up. The guy was very thorough, and he didn’t give me any trouble about the condition of the place – it’s an old place and he was realistic.

There was a slight deviation from protocol because the new tatami hadn’t arrived yet. I heard from the tatami people that they couldn’t install the new tatami until the evening, so that kind of sucked. The guy was understanding enough, but I think he’ll have to come back out and check it out later. We heard from him officially that my successor Brenda wouldn’t be living in this apartment – she’ll be moving into a fourth floor single-sized apartment. Bummer, Brenda.

To his credit, the office manager gave the representative lots of crap about not only getting a single but also hearing about it a week before she arrives. He really laid into the guy, although he couched it in lots of very polite language. My office manager was older than the prefectural representative, so that gave him an advantage and he could really dig into the guy. I enjoyed watching the show.

I am a little worried because a lot of the stuff that I left Brenda might not fit in her tiny apartment. The last thing I want is somebody telling me to take it back, when I’ve just finished squeezing everything into our current place. That’s my big worry now, and it won’t be resolved until sometime after Brenda returns.

After checking out of my place, we went up and looked at Brenda’s apartment. It was tiny – and i’m glad that I didn’t have to live there. The cooking area of the kitchen was about the same size as my old place, but the bathrooms were tiny and the sink to wash your hands after using the bathroom was in the kitchen. There was a fair amount of storage space, however, and I think it will probably work out.

After surveying the apartment we headed back to school, and I spent the day saying goodbye to people and delivering presents to various people. I gave wine to the principal, vice principal, and the office manager who helped me get rid of all my crap. I gave a copy of my favorite book to Tsutsumi sensei, and another book to Nozaki sensei. I gave two Allman Brothers Band CDs to Yamamoto sensei, and to everyone else I gave them a small piece of paper with my address, phone number, and email.

I finished up everything around noon, and I was a little hungry, so I decided to make my move and take off. I gave a final goodbye to everyone and walked out to the front of the school, taking my pair of inside shoes with me – the same pair that I’ve been wearing at work for three years.

In front of the school I took a second to turn around and take it all in, and then I headed down the street one last time to the Takasago train station. On the way there I passed a few students, and they cheerfully called out “Goodbye, Bryan!” in English to me, and that was a great way to end my stint at Takanan.

Even though it was my last day of school, I’m going back next week on a volunteer basis to help out with getting Brenda settled. The trick will be to avoid moving all my old crap up to Brenda’s apartment on the fourth floor – hopefully I can stay busy until that is taken care of.

Next stop was Akashi, where I had some cold ramen noodles at a restaurant near the shopping center there. It used to be an expensive trip from my old place to Akashi, and now it is a short trip and much cheaper from my new place. That means I’ll probably spend more time there which is good news for the underground sushi restaurant, the okonomiyaki place I like near the Akashi Castle Hotel, and most of all for the owner of Donkey. Maybe I should join the dart team…

I went up to Toys R Us in Akashi to look for a kanji training game for the DS. Unfortunately they were sold out like everyone else – I should have bought it earlier when I had the chance. It looks like a great way to learn how to write kanji. It’s designed for everyone from kids to adults. I’ll have to keep searching.

It feels weird to be shopping in Toys R Us as an adult. I’m sensitive to the looks I get from the mothers shopping with their kids. The look is like, “Shouldn’t you be at work now?” combined with “Aren’t you a little old to be playing with toys?” I got out of the quickly and didn’t linger over the cool robot toys. Maybe when I have a kid I won’t feel so nervous in there.

I came on back home to Okubo and ran some errands around town on foot. The air conditioning is really nice in the house and it makes a big difference when you come in out of the heat into a nice cool room. How could you live without it?

Kuniko got home a little early today, and so we both sat around and talked about our days until around 5:30, and then we headed to Saty to buy Carrie a farewell present. We found what we were looking for in a store called “Starvations” – a T-shirt store that has shirts with strange expressions and funny English.

We picked out a shirt that had an illustrated alligator with his jaws wide open, with a couple of little birds sitting on his nose. The English caption read “Be Suddenly Hungry”. It was so cool that Kuniko got one, too, and then we caught the train to Akashi and met up with Carrie one last time.

We met up and walked over to the okonomiyaki place for dinner. The owner remembered us and asked how my family was doing – he’s a really nice guy and I felt a little bad for not going there more. We settled in and ordered food, and talked over beers.

Carrie’s next stop is the Philippines with her boyfriend for a couple of weeks, and then she’ll come back to Japan briefly and fly back home to Seattle from here. She doesn’t have a job lined up yet, but I’m sure she’ll find something soon. She’ll be trying to maintain a long distance relationship with her boyfriend in England, which may be a little bit of a challenge, but I’m sure she can pull it off.

We talked a long time and then headed back to the station to say goodbye. We both got a big hug and then said farewell. I’m sure I’ll be seeing Carrie again before long. She was one of the really nice people that I met when I first arrived in Japan.

With a couple of beers in us we decided to head into Saty on the way home and shop for shelves. Lately we’ve been shopping for shelves quite a bit but for some reason have had trouble finding something that both of us like. Like when we picked out our wedding rings – we just go shopping with a bit of a buzz going and everything works out fine. We found some shelves pretty quickly, and we also got some shelving for the bathroom, too. We bought them but realized that they were way too heavy to carry all the way back home, so we left them there and then went back and got the car. Kuniko passed an impromptu sobriety check, so she drove the 5-6 blocks back to Saty and we loaded up the two heavy packages into the car and came home.

I took the first piece up the two flights of stairs to our apartment, but when I came back down for the second piece, Kuniko’s car had automatically locked itself. I had to run upstairs and get Kuniko to lean out our door and use her clicker to unlock it again. Then I went downstairs and headed to the car, but as I approached it – it locked again. Kuniko had already gone back inside, so I had to run back up the stairs again, and this time I brought Kuniko and the keys with me and finally I was able to lug the last heavy piece back upstairs. It was like something out of a movie.

We were both too tired to do any furniture assembly tonight, so that’ll be on list of things to do tomorrow, my first day of unemployment.

Getting Rid Of Junk, Shopping For Gifts

  • Jul 26, 2006
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Wednesday I went off to school, taking the long way on the train system because there is no direct train line from Okubo to Futami. It is a little expensive, but since it is just a few days this week I can afford it. I worked for a couple of hours in the morning organizing my desk, but the whole time I was stressing over the pile of difficult to dispose of garbage on the back porch at home. I was hoping to ask Yamamoto sensei for some help in getting rid of it, but unfortunately his father passed away recently, and he wasn’t at school.

Instead I went and talked to the office manager about it. He is a really nice guy and is just realizing just how much Japanese I can understand and speak. We talked about it for a while and we decided to drive over there and take a look. I showed him how to get there, and when we arrived we looked around at the apartment, mostly empty except for the stuff that I am leaving for my successor.

He looked at all the weird junk and said that we should load it in his car and take it back to the school. On Thursday a representative from the prefectural government was coming to check out the apartment and make sure it was OK. I soon realized that it was more important for the office manager that we have a clean apartment than any inconvenience for him moving crap around. We loaded it all up, and then the office manager asked me to maybe clean up just a little bit more before tomorrow.

We got back to school with my junk and pulled up next to the maintenance worker shack. He was surprisingly not so concerned about us dropping off all my unwanted crap next to his shed. In fact, he got excited about some of the stuff and I was very pleased that someone might get some use out of stuff that I was expecting to have to pay money to get rid of.

The rest of the day was pretty mild, and I went home a little early to get a jump on the cleaning that the office manager had hinted about. I came back to Futami, and bought a few last minute cleaning supplies at IY, and then spent about an hour gathering every last thing and doing some detail work around the empty house.

Kuniko got off early from work, and we worked some logistics and she came over in her car to Futami. We met up in IY where I was shopping for some farewell presents for teachers, and from there we packed her car with the last load out of the old house, and then took off. Before we left we used the last of the points on our IY card to buy some groceries, and then we headed to Carrefour and Midori to look for some good shelves for the living room. Unfortunately we struck out on the shelves, but we did get some cheese, flowers and wine at Carrefour.

That night we stayed home and had cheese and crackers for dinner, and relaxed in the evening. Our repaired Nintendo DS arrived in the mail, so we hunkered down in the air conditioned living room and played games and relaxed. We’ve still got lots of unpacking to do, but it has been so hot and we’ve been so tired in the evenings that we haven’t been able to make headway. Luckily, I’ll be unemployed starting on Friday, so I can get a lot done then.