living like a local: tired, and IN TOKYO!!

Saturday, October 3, 2009

tired, and IN TOKYO!!

We are here! And we are tired, jet-lagged and still awake. We arrived yesterday to a full afternoon and evening, and have just – at 10pm – finished dinner after a late return from the gym. The 13-hour flight wasn’t too bad, thanks to a kind flight attendant; when he saw that we (or, rather, Steve) couldn’t fit into the economy seats, gave us ONE first class upgrade. We switched a few times, and shared one fancy meal, but couldn’t sit together. Oh well! Three guys from the club were there when we arrived, and took us through rush-hour-Tokyo to the gym – both of us fell asleep on the way. Sadly (and despite a few glasses of wine), I didn’t get many zzzzs on the plane. Anyways, long story short – we checked out the gym, met the team, made short impromptu speeches, met management and office staff (there was almost always clapping - I'm pretty sure I did nothing to deserve any of it) … and then made for our apartment in more traffic. We dropped off our bags and headed out almost immediately for the welcome party/dinner. In short: traditional stubby-leg table, tall, tired foreigners, kind and welcoming staff, delicious food (shabu shabu and udon), champagne, a toast, beer, speeches (from them: we have many expectations for you and for the team, we’re happy to have you here; from us: we are happy to be here, thank you thank you), kimono-clad servers... and probably more. Anyways, we were back home and in our long bed much later than we would have liked, but it meant that we were tired enough to sleep through the night.

And today. We hit the grocery store – three of the seven levels – for kitchen paraphernalia and groceries; it felt (and feels) weird to be doing this again so soon… setting up another kitchen, buying another lasagna pan. Anyways, it’s all sensory overload – the grocery store and the city – soooo many people and shops and goods and levels, everywhere and at every glance. We made it back home in time to stuff some food down our gullets and take off almost immediately for the gym, for practice. So, that being said, we left at 1:00 for a 2:30 training session, and got home… hmm… around 9:30… !!!!! The guys practiced for almost five hours (!!), and it took us a solid 45 minutes to get home on the subway and train. And so, we are very, very tired. The apartment is good – a tad far from the gym, but apparently the only thing available. The team's sponsor company owns the place, so we're paying considerably less for it than we would be for anything else - closer or farther from training. And guess how much we paid to get home from F.C. Tokyo’s training gym... 850 yen each! That’s $10 (each), one-way. This is going to be a very different year, in almost every way. We‘ll have to get used to the big city life, and all of the plusses and minuses that come with it. And that’s all I’ve got for now – some pics, so far, and hopefully a more energetic blog tomorrow!