Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.

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Japan, day Seven

aka: The wrong day, the wrong direction, the wrong street, the wrong selection

I gave in to my semi annual double-double cravings today and went to In&Out for lunch. While there, I saw a teenage boy in shorts & sandals walking through the parking lot. Not unusual except for the wristwatch he wore on his ankle.

This is the fourth person I have seen doing this in as many weeks. As far as I can tell, the only common factors they share has been that they were all in their late teens/early twenties and that they were all in shorts & sandals. Although, if they were doing it while wearing pants, I wouldn't have noticed. That would make telling time harder though, not only would you have to lift up your leg, but you would have to roll up your pants as well. Though, practicality probably has nothing to do with this particular fashion statement.

So, is this some new hip craze that the young folk are into? Or did I just happened to see the only four guys 'n gals who were into this look?

Um, anyhow, here is another ''catch-up/vacation" entry:

Wednesday 07/04/01:

After prompting by several people who insisted that we had to see it, John and I made arrangements to visit Kyoto for a couple of days. We bought tickets for the Shinkansen (the bullet train). Not the fast one, but the slow one. Which just meant that we didn't fork out the extra money for the express, but took a train which had a few stops, so it couldn't stay at full speed, with all the slowing down and stopping and such. The train didn't leave until the late afternoon, which left us most of the day to do something fun. Fun being the Tokyo Sea Life Park.

Beth got Jacob ready, we all piled into the car and Carlos drove. An hour later, we arrived only to discover that the aquarium had changed it's closed day from Monday to Wednesday. Very annoying, also very recent, I'm guessing since there were lots of people stopping at the closed gates and staring at the closed signs.

So instead of aquarium, bold architecture and some sort of tuna swimming around you tube thing, we walked around the beach. After boredom set in, we had lunch at a generic pseudo-european cafe at a generic "aren't we unique, look at all the funky buildings and stores" type super sized mall near Disneyland Tokyo. We did some window shopping, which proved that we really do pay very little for CD's in the states. It also proved that those annoying boy bands are everywhere. yeash.

After supermall, we drove back into the city proper and Carlos & Beth dropped John & me off at the railroad station.

The train ride was pleasant and efficient. It was overcast that day and the clouds were so low that I wasn't sure if I saw Mt. Fuji or not. I saw the base of what appeared to be a quite large mountain, but with all the haze, it was hard to tell.

John napped during the trip, but I just sat staring at the passing landscape. Mountains, towns, roads, forests and lots of farmland. Fields of rice, wheat?, tomatoes, some other type of vegetable and what appeared to be flooded fields of lotus. Grown as a food crop for the roots I'm assuming.

I'm not sure of what the distance is between the two cities, but even on the "slow" train, it only took a couple of hours to get to Kyoto.

After arriving, we walked to the bus stop to head over to the inn we had booked ourselves into. Unfortunately, we made a mistake. We got on the right bus, but we got on in the wrong direction. We weren't worried, until we relived that the trip was going to take a very long time and we were going to miss our check in time. So we made another mistake and got off the bus so we get on another one that was at least heading in the right direction.

With some help from a kind stranger, we got on a different bus that took us straight into the Gion district, were we then had problems finding the inn. John and I ended up walking by it twice. We were NOT happy campers by that point and were doing a good job of not talking to each other, which is when we (read: I ) found the inn exactly were it was supposed to be.

So John and I finally arrived after getting lost and some minor not quite yelling and gruff and some actual yelling and gruff. We were hoping to check in, dump our stuff, then leave in search of some diner, but it turned out that we couldn't leave quite yet. First, we had to listen to a rather long explanation about rules and etiquette for common baths, then, the woman who showed us to our room served us tea. It wasn't a full on, several hour long, proper tea service, but rather a more abbreviated, brief one. It was still quite civilized and calming, which I guess we needed by that point. When we left the inn in search of dinner, it was fairly late and we were starving, but at least we were much calmer.

Finding a place to eat at wasn't that easy and the one place we could both agree on, turned out to be closed, so we decided on getting some food food at a minimarket type place and taking it back to the room. The food selection was much better there than it would have been here back home. Instead of nasty looking hot dogs and dried up, aged, overly processed, prepackaged sandwiches, there were nice, attractive, fresh looking sandwiches, snacks and bento boxes. I settled on some cold soba and John bought himself an egg salad sandwich and a small salad.

We walked back to the inn satisfied with our selections, made it back up to our room, did the take off your shoes thing, sat down at the low table in the middle of the room and started into the food. Which was when John noticed that there was something underneath the egg salad. Turned out to be fried ham. Slices of deli ham that had been breaded then deep fried kind of fried ham that is. If that wasn't enough, underneath the the layer of ham was a layer of spaghetti.

John wouldn't even touch the ham. I had to be good husband and pick it out of the sandwich for him. By the time I finished, there was barely any sandwich left. It was a sorrowful looking thing until John put some of his salad into it.

On the other hand, my cold noodles were good, although I did not eat the quail egg. Yuck.

We were tired from the angst of the day and didn't feel like dealing with a public bath, so we showered in our room like the nervous about bathing in public gaijin tourists that we were. Two futons had been set out for us, so after the shower, we pushed them together as best we could and settled in for the night. My back had been hurting a little for various reasons, so I wasn't looking forward to sleeping on a futon. For a good reason it turned out, my back was incredibly stiff the next day.

More later

nico

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