todays schedule: take pictures of Japanese appliances (air conditioning control - so we can turn it off )0 and washer/dryer (unit does both) email our absent hosts so that they can tell us how they work. Download Gimp in the process to make labels for all the buttons in photos.
Exchange JR pass vouchers
Do laundry.
Research Kyoto hostels and reserve space.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
First day and a quarter
Wow! First time off the continent! Everyone is short and everything is written in Japanese. We are getting better at finding cheap food. We successfully found our way to the Friday Night Magic location, but I misread 20:00 as 6:00 so we got there so early that no one was there. We seem to constantly have just barely enough information to function. It is intense and invigorating (and I am sure at the end of my energy exhausting) to be here. There are many shrines and parks. I am really interested in learning Japanese now. But I will be a humble correspondent for those who are not with us.
The Tokyo part of this trip has been hugely facilitated by Diana Kes who has hosted us, fed us and helped us find our way around - all without never having met us before. Diana and her husband, Jacob connected with us through Dabney House (where Jacob and I lived at Caltech, but 20 years apart) She took an hour train ride to meet us at the airport. We spent a long time trying to hook up with wireless service before going through Customs because, never having travelled out of North America in my 51 years, I did not know that I needed to have a Japanese address handy for Customs and Immigration. So 20 minutes later of working through slow airport wi-fi we had her address off my gmail. Diana is also an American (Chicana to be more precise). It was amazing taking the train back through rural Japan before we got into the Tokyo suburbs. There were ride paddies and bamboo everywhere (I guess that I should have expected this).
In all, I got maybe two hours of sleep before the 13 hour flight()and five the night before) and one hour on the flight
Then we dropped our bags off and Diana took us someplace to get ramen. The dish to the left was 880 Yen. You see pork, seaweed, ごまとまご （sesame egg - sesame: goma, tomago: egg) with scallions and grapefruit rind in the center . This was a push for me to eat as I am practically afraid of boiled eggs. It was fishy tasting (bonito flakes I assume).
We are staying in the Shinbashi District. This is an older financial center and so has been a high rent district for a long time so we go to be in two parks and two shrines today in randomly wandering and see things on maps to walk to.
Our first outing was to Atago Shrine across the street (you can see part of the word Atago on the menu in the first picture). There were steps as steep as the Hundred Steps in Fairmount Park
The Tokyo part of this trip has been hugely facilitated by Diana Kes who has hosted us, fed us and helped us find our way around - all without never having met us before. Diana and her husband, Jacob connected with us through Dabney House (where Jacob and I lived at Caltech, but 20 years apart) She took an hour train ride to meet us at the airport. We spent a long time trying to hook up with wireless service before going through Customs because, never having travelled out of North America in my 51 years, I did not know that I needed to have a Japanese address handy for Customs and Immigration. So 20 minutes later of working through slow airport wi-fi we had her address off my gmail. Diana is also an American (Chicana to be more precise). It was amazing taking the train back through rural Japan before we got into the Tokyo suburbs. There were ride paddies and bamboo everywhere (I guess that I should have expected this).
In all, I got maybe two hours of sleep before the 13 hour flight()and five the night before) and one hour on the flightThen we dropped our bags off and Diana took us someplace to get ramen. The dish to the left was 880 Yen. You see pork, seaweed, ごまとまご （sesame egg - sesame: goma, tomago: egg) with scallions and grapefruit rind in the center . This was a push for me to eat as I am practically afraid of boiled eggs. It was fishy tasting (bonito flakes I assume).
We are staying in the Shinbashi District. This is an older financial center and so has been a high rent district for a long time so we go to be in two parks and two shrines today in randomly wandering and see things on maps to walk to.
Our first outing was to Atago Shrine across the street (you can see part of the word Atago on the menu in the first picture). There were steps as steep as the Hundred Steps in Fairmount Park
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