en route (pics to come!)

And finally, a spare moment en route. I am on the speedy, humming, fast as a bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka for the weekend and this is for SURE my favourite way to travel. There is space, comfort, a huge window and an interesting view. What there isn’t is almost more appealing: no long lines, no rude or unpleasant or cranky check-in people, no bag eyeballers (too heavy too much) and no long waits or lengthy inspections at security. I don’t know how they do it – how they don’t have security and bag scanners and all of the other gadgets and rigmarole instituted at airports. There were quite a few security people on the platform and at the entrance to the Shinkansen tracks, and I suppose they are on the lookout for suspicious looking people and bags and such, but ? There are some things that a scanner can tell you that a human being cannot. And this thing flies. It is very very very speedy and I love it.

So, I am on my way to Osaka for the weekend to watch two of Steve’s last games. They’re playing in a big and important tourney that could last up to a week – if all goes as well as it possibly can. I’m making the Friday night after work trip down south (or southwest) to catch the Saturday and Sunday games, and then will head back home on Monday. Anna – who left for Kyoto this morning – will join me in Osaka on Sunday for some mega volleyball action, and home we will go together.

Like all of our guests, she’s been loving Tokyo, and we’ve only been to the Food Show twice. She’s been busy busy visiting all sorts of neighborhoods and areas, and has done so mostly on her own or with Nao, because I have had to work, boo hoo. There is still so much (so so so much) for us to see that it would have been really great to cruise around with my high school buddy every day… but oh well. We did get a few pretty solid days in last weekend.

She arrived from NYC on Friday night, and somehow managed to stay up late late and meet Steve for the first time - yay. (It’s kind of nice when an old friend meets a new friend and things click and work, n’est pas? Especially if that new friend is your husband…) On Saturday we took the train to Shibuya and wandered; I had a few errands to do, and there is so much to see there that I think we walked and chatted away the first half of the day. Steve and I had a dinner/party to go to at his captain’s house that night, so we had to part ways on day one; Anna met up with a friend of hers that lives here, and together they checked out Ebisu and Akihabara – by night.. The party that we went to is an entire story unto itself, and I’m not sure I can do it justice here, but basically there were maybe 10 or 12 of us – teammates and a few wives/girlfriends/friends – that gathered around a few small tables for food, drink, chatter and videos. I’m sure that a sociology or cultural studies student could write a thesis on how this night played out, and on the cultural differences that abounded. (When we arrived, we were shown the couch, and told “chotto mate” – wait a moment – and then all of the guys disappeared, only to return 20 minutes later with a small stockpile of beer and sparkling wine. We were left wondering, should we do something? Where did everyone go?) First of all, there was very little English, so almost anything that anyone wanted to say to us was first fed into the phone translator and then spat out - some of it made sense, and most of it didn’t. The one that Steve like was something like “this is a party for people who like Steve” or “all the people here are people who like Steve”… which made him wonder if the other thirty guys on the team weren’t so inclined. Other nonsensical ones went something like “the thing in the back of the stomach which isn’t is delectable” – I can’t remember any specifically, but verbs and subjects and question marks are sometimes lost, along with the point or purpose of the, well, lost translation. There was a ton of food – mostly picky, snacky easy-to-eat food: gyoza, sliced pork, takoyaki (octopus balls), tofu – and a big bubbly pot of nabe. Nabe is hotpot with anything in (I think); this edition held tofu, pork, cabbage, onions, mushrooms and crab (and probably more), so I had to pass. We ate and ate and people drank and drank, and then the videos started – this is where things got extremely culturally different (/weird). The first video was footage from out host’s wedding, and it was really neat to see the traditional ceremony in Meiji-jingu, and watch the customary agenda of a traditional Japanese wedding. It was also interesting to see their grand entrance (smoke and a dancing dragon – which prompted Steve to say “Why didn’t WE have a dragon? I want a dragon!”), and the boy band performance that some of their teammates did in mini cutoffs and white women’s tank tops. I guess they were skit-imitating-lip-synching (or singing? I don’t remember) a popular boy-ish band from the 80s – they danced and sang and did a fully rehearsed and choreographed dance routine for several (maybe five?) minutes. It was very funny, and a little weird, I think only because something like that would never happen in North America (at least not with any of the dudes that I know). And then burned blue ray video number two came out. Titled Ito’s birthday project, this thing – I can’t really fully explain it because it would take forever – involved and showed rehearsals (clothed and half-clothed), song and dance, discussions (clothed and half-clothed), debates, a strip-game (teambuilding?), and then a full on performance in which Ito, the birthday guy, wore a Spider Man outfit (including the full face mask) and the other four guys wore black tights and googly goggly glasses and that’s it. There were parts that were seriously weird and seriously funny at the same time, and we really wondered how on earth these guys had or have time to do this kind of stuff. They work full time jobs, train five hours a day and have families…. where and how (and why) do they find time to do these things? It went on for quite some time, and we understood none of the jabber – we could only watch. It was something that would never happen in North American culture (the videos and complexity of this project), especially with men, so it was very interesting for us. Very funny, quite strange and extremely entertaining. Anyways. Yup. It was fun – we ate great food, hung out with great people that we couldn’t really communicate with and saw some interesting stuff. Interessant.

A tall/small pic... with two Canadians: Steve and Anna

Marili and I on the way, and our two big guys on the train...


So anyways, the rest of the weekend was also fabulous. On Sunday Marili, Hendrik, Nao, Anna, Steve and I went to the Tokyo Dome and watched the Giants take on the Hiroshima Carp and it was SO FUN! The Tokyo Dome is amazing, and I wish we had taken some of our other guests there. It’s a shopping mall, amusement park and baseball stadium all in one AND Sunday was a special day in that there were a million (okay maybe a hundred? or hundreds?) of dressed up to the MAX people milling about. They were milling, and photographing each other in strange poses – we were pointing and exclaiming look there! oh my god look at that… and what are they doing? and what is that? look look look! There were people dressed in every costume or combination of costumes you can imagine – some that made sense and some that didn’t. This is cosplay – costume play – and I can’t tell you exactly why people do it, but it is another interesting (interesting on steroids) experience, to see hordes of cosplayers of all ages and costume interests in one place at one time. It was almost eyeball overload. The baseball was super fun too – everyone knew all the cheers and all of the motions that went along with them, and the home team won and we had beverages and snacks… it was a good day at the ball park.






There’s much more, but I’ll leave it at that. The week has been full of balancing work and visiting, and this weekend will be another good one. We’re still looking forward to going home, but already looking back at what we’ll miss the most – our friends!