Sonder

Perhaps it's a side effect of being in one's thirties, but I've acquired a really annoying habit of carrying around a giant yard stick of Time that I compare everything against. I've lived through 11,735 days so far, which are all just the quivering water behind an increasingly distant and fading wake. But something about that tick on the yardstick is oddly satisfying – the passage of time is swift and doesn't slow down for obstacles, and reflecting on a tangible memory of “X years ago today” is sort of a way to ground myself in that swift current. X years ago today, I did a thing, and then a bunch of other things happened, and here I am – and I'm not dead yet.


In Japan, Obon is a holiday which celebrates our ancestors who have passed away. In celebration of this holiday is a festival called Bon Odori, with boisterous music and dancing. As the story goes, a disciple of the Buddha was able to look upon his deceased mother in the afterlife and found that she had fallen into a terrible realm and was suffering greatly. After making offerings to monks, he was able to see his mother released from this suffering, but he also was able to see the true nature of her selflessness and all of the sacrifices she had made for him when she was alive. So, he danced with joy – and this is what is celebrated at Bon Odori.


On August 5^th, there were many Bon Odori festivals around Japan. It was Saturday, so we were planning out our day and deciding which festival to enjoy. Since we've been hopeless city slickers since moving to Japan, we decided to head to the famous Shibuya Crossing in the middle of Tokyo, which was staging a huge festival. Scientific research has determined that approximately 18 million shit-tons (scientific measurement) of people walk through Shibuya Crossing every 7 minutes. So why not go there to deeply reflect on the sacrifices and legacies of our deceased loved ones? Right...? Yeah, I don't know what we were thinking either.


At one point in the day, my Yard Stick of Time slapped me in the face. August 5^th. It was August 5^th. It had been exactly one year to the day since my beloved Grandpa Bob passed away. Suddenly, going to a Bon Odori festival to celebrate the dead in the most humanity-packed intersection in the world seemed a little disingenuous bordering on awkwardly ironic... but on we went. Grandpa would have found the irony hilarious.


We walked from Shinjuku to Shibuya, so basically in between two of the hugest neighborhoods Tokyo (and the world) has to offer. Being a festival weekend, there were a ton of people out and about in traditional dress, wearing beautiful yukatas. I started noticing how all the women had perfectly constructed, braided up-dos, and every group of people who shuffled past us were dressed to the nine's, so dressed to the kyo's if we're getting linguistically technical.


In the 4 kilometers we walked, we saw so many people. Dozens, hundreds, thousands. Jan stopped at one point to give candy to a little girl who was upset and her face completely lit up. We walked past a couple of Americans who asked me to take their picture holding ice cream in Harajuku and they were so over-the-top thankful. It occurred to me – this wasn't just a fun day out for me. There are thousands of people in immediate proximity to me who are having a fun day of their own. They're sharing this day with their family and friends, they're perhaps thinking of and honoring their ancestors for Obon, they all have lives too. I'm just a tiny little flash, a person in the background of a picture they took, in the incredibly complex, sometimes beautiful and sometimes tragic lives of thousands of people whose stories I will never know.


Somewhere between Shinjuku and Shibuya, thousands of miles away from the only life and family I've ever known, which is now that quivering water in a fading wake which is still capable of throwing turbulence my way – I was lost for words. I am a wordy-ass lady which if you're reading this you already know, so that's saying something.


“Jan,” I said, as I watched the little girl he had given candy walk ahead of us holding hands with her dad. “Do you ever think about the fact that there are so many people around you who have stories and lives that are just as crazy as ours? Doesn't that freak you out a bit?”


“You know, there's actually a word for that,” he said.


He was right. That word is “sonder.”


Paraphrasing isn't necessary when the original is so well-stated, so I'll leave you with this definition:


“The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.”


We are simultaneously the movie stars of our own lives, and the blink-of-an-eye extra in the millions of movies centered around everyone we encounter. What will your role be? It's inevitable that to many people, you will just be a blur if you even exist at all. But perhaps sometimes, instead of being a blur, you hand a little girl some candy. You take a woman's camera and spend a few minutes giving her and friend a photo shoot. The rough pixelation of your passing presence in a stranger's story starts to come to life more vividly, like a photo slowly rendering, more and more in focus. In a way, this is immortalizing. You exist in their memory.


I initially thought that celebrating my late ancestors was poorly done by heading to the biggest city in the world to get lost in the chaos, as opposed to perhaps finding a lovely forest and a babbling brook where I could sit and deeply contemplate their lives. I was wrong.


My dearly departed grandpa was an educator and a published expert in brain development, and he had a favorite phrase - “we are a social species.” Solitude is a wonderful thing, but we truly do depend on the people around us to develop and strengthen the complex webs of our lives. Being surrounded by so many people during Bon Odori was a great reminder that I have an unspoken, inherent obligation to the people I pass by, to “first, do no harm”, as the Hippoocratic oath states.


Obon is a celebration of the stars in our lives who have died. But it is also a reminder that you have such an amazing opportunity to be a star in the lives of those around you – even in a small way. Smile at the stranger who is frowning. Be kind. Be present. You never know when such a small act might render your image a little more clearly in the story of someone else's life.


I miss you, Grandpa. I am sad that you died a year ago (according to my yard stick), but I will always be thankful for your starring role in the movie of my life.

Home and Alone

My husband went back home to the United States for a few weeks and I figured I'd be fine, no big deal. I am woman, hear me roar. One of the greatest things about adulthood is overcoming the whole, junior high, “if you eat lunch alone you're weird” stigma. I love the hell out of doing stuff alone – eating lunch, grabbing a drink, shopping, watching a movie... I'm awesome, I love hanging out with me.


But, I never really anticipated that I would be alone in a foreign country. Much less a foreign country where you need to be able to read hiragana, katakana AND kanji just to be able to flush a goddamn toilet. When you have a travel companion, it is all hilarity and laughs. Forging your way on your own is an entirely different experience.


My first Saturday alone, I decided to head to Enoshima, which is a small island about 50km south of my home in Sagamihara. Navigating Japan is usually quite easy because Jan does like 2 hours of travel planning every time we leave the house and all I have to do is not trip over my own feet or get distracted by pigeons. When left to my own devices, distracting pigeons are pretty low on my list of problems behind not being on the train platform that takes me in the exact opposite direction of where I'm going or getting lost leaving the bathroom.


I decided to spend the extra 400 yen and get a Romancecar ticket – an express train where you have an assigned seat and cute Japanese girls sell you beers and bento boxes. I arrived in style at the Katase-Enoshima station with absolutely no plan whatsoever, and having done no research about where to go and how to get there. I'm a super good adult. So I just wandered out of the train station, itchy finger on my Google Maps app, and walked out into the sun. And there it was – MOUNT EFFING FUJI. Just right there in front of me. Across the water, but right there.


I walked over to a lookout point next to a pedestrian bridge that takes you to the actual island, and I just sat there and stared. Mt. Fuji – even from such a distance – just imposes itself on you. I'm not sure I truly appreciated the word “regal” until then.


My friend and Japanese cultural adviser had recommended I go left instead of straight once crossing the pedestrian bridge onto the island, to avoid the touristy crowd that makes its way up to the shrines at the top of the island. I took this advise, and quickly found myself quite literally wandering on people's front porches. There were no other people there, just a ton of cats roaming around and annoyingly countering my growing anxiety with their complete lack of fucks given about absolutely anything at all.


I finally encounter a road that has a couple of storefronts that appear to be restaurants and I started to feel like maybe I hadn't gotten lost entirely. I noticed an old man sitting on a bench in front of one, and he noticed me. He waved me over and slowly stood up to walk towards me. The ground under my feet felt a thousand years old, and it probably was. He eventually stopped near a staircase, and beckoned over an island cat. With his hand gestures and expressions, he gave me permission to pet it, although the cat itself had clearly not been consulted regarding this authorization. Island cat was less interested in my affection than my own cat, who I feed and whose shit I scoop up while he chews on my ankles.


After being rebuked by the island cat, the old man pointed me up a narrow, scary looking staircase. He nodded and bowed as I thanked him and headed up the staircase, hoping it led to somewhere that wasn't a secret gaijin prison. I was on a tsunami evacuation route which I surmised from the signs that made stick figures drowning look HILARIOUS, and getting increasingly worried about where exactly I was heading. Finally, I saw a tsunami of people (see what I did there?). I had made it to the top and was encountered with a huge Torii gate and a series of beautiful temples. My grandmother is Buddhist and she always projects so much tranquility and wisdom – I felt like she was there with me. I'm used to TOKYO BRIGHT LIGHTS FLASHING THINGS SCANTILLY CLAD WOMEN IN HEELS BIG CITY... but up there among the temples, I hadn't felt more secluded in months. I was aware of each deep breath I took, because it felt reinvigorating and cleansing. The lack of distractions was both relieving and jarring.


I ended up at a lookout at the very top of the island, and had a moment of total peace and clarity. I had gotten myself there – not just in a not-distracted-by-pigeons transportation standpoint, but I had gotten myself to JAPAN after years of hard work – holy SHIT, this is my HOME now. With the wind whipping my hair into dreadlocks and the sun setting behind Mt Fuji right in front of me, I done got all teary-eyed. I instinctively reached out to grab my husband's hand, but he was thousands of miles away.


My Enoshima experience was a great exercise in being alone and being with oneself spiritually. In the following days, it was countered by immersing myself into a community of friends who are also ex-pats in Japan. We had happy hours, dinner parties, outings to the fish market and water taxi rides – I learned how to be alone in congruence with welcoming new friendships and getting out of my shell (which is pretty thin let's be honest but go with it).


So, my other half got back from the States this weekend. We headed into Shinjuku then Ginza and had a ridiculously fun time being miscreants and arcading and playing Jenga with bartenders and all other sorts of escapades. It's so nice to have my travel buddy and best friend back, but his absence also emphasized how critical to sanity and reinvigorating solitude is.


Take the scary stairs to a indeterminate destination. Pet a skanky island cat who wants to maul you because a sweet old man tells you to. Go on a journey with no escape route. These are all cheesy recommendations, what I really want to say is carry enough change to always be able to pop into an arcade and play MarioKart after buying a couple of road Highballs. Life is fun with a partner, but life is fun period.


Be your own best friend, and you'll be a better best friend.

Ebbs and Flows

Long time, no see.

Where to start? Well, about a month ago I experienced Japanese cedar pollen allergies which killed me, and I died. Two weekends in a row, for the first time since we moved here, we stayed home because with my hideous coughing and sneezing I was a walking personification of the reason that people wear masks here. I felt like Ace Ventura in When Nature Calls, being introduced to the tribes - “they did not know about disease, until the white man came”... then he sneezed on them.


After I resurrected myself, I had a weird sort of mental shift. Everything here was still wonderful and exciting and beautiful, but it hit me.


I'm not on vacation. I live here.


April marked 6 months in Japan. I will be here at least another 30 months and more likely 54. If I had to uproot my entire life to move anywhere in the world, I would probably choose Japan (again). But even when the scenery is awesome, moving your entire existence to a foreign country on the literal other side of the planet is, for lack of a better word, a bit traumatic. I suppose I would compare it to being in a perfect-temperature pool with a martini in your hand, but after being lit on fire and hurled into it through a swarm of flying ants at 100mph. “This is pretty nice, I'm enjoying this, but what the in the fuck just happened?”


Sticking with the pool and martini analogy, at the six month mark, my drink was empty and I wanted a towel. Just to take a break, refill, dry off for a bit, and then get back in. I needed just a taste of home, just for a little bit. Just to recharge. But, I live here and I'm not going home anytime soon. I would be in this pool until my fingers were pruney. It was a weird little funk that I fell into, and when you are somewhere as cool as Japan, you do not give yourself permission to not love the shit out of your life.


Then, the best things happened. I'm not a religious person by any means, but I feel like some hippie-dippy spiritual juju monster was like, “psssh, sister, I got you.”


First, one of my best friends from junior high (which was TWENTY YEARS AGO OMG I'M A FOSSIL) sent me a message because she and her husband were going to be in Tokyo on vacation. Jan and I took a day off work and met up with them, showing them around and enjoying the company of an old friend and a new friend. We did a couple of the touristy things that we did when we first got here, along with checking out some spots that you only know if you live here – including a bar that's so dark the bartendress hands you a flashlight when you walk in, and you order songs off a menu along with your drinks. It was perfect – I got to re-experience the first-time “holy shit this is Tokyo” glow by proxy, and feel like a super bad ass level 1000 Tokyo Expert who knows the cool places that gaijin (literally, “outside person” - common slang for foreigner) would never dare walk into.


This gave me a good boost out of my homesick pity-party mood. I was out of the pool for a second, drying off with a towel, and now the pool looked super appealing again. I just needed a refill on my drink...


Thank you, hippie-dippy spiritual juju monster! One of my coworkers from Portland shipped out to Japan on a 2-month assignment. Refill achieved.


His first weekend here, another coworker of mine who is WAY more experienced in the art of living in Japan took us all somewhere way off the tourist itinerary. “Bring 100 yen coins. We're going to bet on horses and boats.”


So, on a beautiful Saturday, off we went to Tokyo Racecourse in Fuchu – generally considered the best horserace track in Tokyo. It was my newly-arrived coworker's first weekend in Tokyo – but it felt brand new to us too that day. After a crash-course in how to fill out a betting card, we happily proceeded to drink highballs and stare at the constantly shifting odds on the monitors above us, finally hedging our bets and torching our money on fire. I think one of us won like 20 cents, in the whole 2 hours we were there. There were old Japanese men in every interior corner of the racecourse with tarps laid out, shoes off, pouring over betting odds, drinking beer, napping. This was serious business.


After our highball buzz muted out the humiliation of losing like a zillion times on horses, we hopped on a bus to the boat race track. Jan was particularly excited about this because vroom vroom and speed. While the horserace track was very high-end and fancy, the boat race track was... not. And there were literally no Westerners there besides us. I was stared at while walking to the bathroom like I was a rare Siberian tiger.


The betting was more interesting here. There was a line of guys in booths, and if you slipped them 100 yen, they would slip you a piece of paper with their educated guesses at which boats to bet on. It felt very nefarious. So we paid a couple boat race savants for a couple of scraggly pieces of paper, and scrawled out our bets. The skies opened up and it rained on us while we watched our money vaporize again.


It was like we experienced Japan for the first time, all over again.


This last weekend, we took my newly-arrived coworker out on our own, honing our every-increasing Japan Expert Level skills. We walked through the famous Shibuya Crossing, visited Tokyo Tower, played MarioKart at a 5 story arcade (I completely humiliated both of my competitors for the record), drank in Shinjuku while it was lit up like Blade Runner, and had dinner at our coworker's apartment where we watched the sun set over the city.


That was what I needed. Drink refilled, and who needs a towel when you have a pool?


I've been completely recharged. Living away from everyone and everything you've ever known is indescribably strange in a good way, and I've given myself permission to fully embrace the peaks and valleys; the ebbs and flows – which are inevitable. For now, I'm going to enjoy how I feel today, because I feel awesome.


Life is beautiful.

(For the record - these pictures are a mash-ups from the last month)

Hi I'm Here To Complain

I promised a blog last week and didn’t deliver so I’m sorry to my tens of fans (hi, Mom!).  I have a good excuse.  Everything north of my boobs revolted against me.

I took a trip to Okinawa for work, the last week of February/first week of March.  I was there to meet colleagues who I normally only communicate with via email, and provide training on project scheduling.  Okinawa did not at all feel like Japan – it felt like Hawaii, where I’ve never been so I am entirely unqualified to say that – but it had a laid back, island feel to it.  A stark departure from the insane pace of Tokyo.

Everything was awesome – my hotel was beachfront, I spent my off hours wandering around and exploring.  It was beautiful and serene.  On my final day there, I was giving a presentation and something happened.  

I’ll provide two examples, it will be fun, like a choose-your-own-adventure.

Do you wear contact lenses?  If no, proceed to the next paragraph.  If yes, it felt like I had put my left contact lens in INSIDE OUT and also there was a mascara-covered eyelash under it.  

Oh hi, non-contact lens wearers.  Imagine you take a wine glass, and you smash it on your countertop, then you take a rolling pin and grind the shards into a fine dust, and then you dump that into your eye.

I had to apologize and excuse myself multiple times to go to the bathroom and sop up the fountain of tears pouring from my eye and pep talk myself in the mirror to not rip my entire eyeball out of its socket.  I was having a flare-up of what is called giant papillary conjunctivitis which I have experienced a few times since I started wearing lenses when I was 12.  Don’t Google it.  It’s gross.  As my ophthalmologist told me when I was a teenager and this first occurred, “this is a stay-at-home-on-a-Saturday-night kind of thing”. 

I flew home the next day in agony.  When we woke up on Saturday, I was still in so much pain that I told Jan I couldn’t do anything but rock in the corner and figure out how to atone for whatever sins brought this upon me.  For the first time since we moved to Japan, we stayed in on a Saturday night.  My ophthalmologist was right.

It finally faded and by Monday I was feeling back to normal.  Then the cedar pollen hit.  Hold on to your britches because cedar pollen may sound cute and delightful and full of NATURE, but NATURE IS A HUGE BITCH SOMETIMES, SHEILA.  

Here’s an excerpt from a New York Times article:

“The forests in this mountainous region were once verdant swaths of oak, maple and numerous other kinds of broadleaf trees and evergreens. But after World War II, Government bureaucrats applied their aggressive industrial policies to the environment as well as the economy. In the process, they financed the replacement of what they saw as commercially useless natural forests with more economically productive trees. 

For the most part, this extraordinary experiment in environmental engineering has involved planting a single species, the Japanese cedar, because of the usefulness of its wood and the speed of its growth. As a result, Japan now has the largest tracts of cedar on earth, with this scenic region around Mount Fuji, long regarded as a symbol of the nation, among the most densely planted. 

The aim was to make the country self-sufficient in wood products, but the widespread sensitivities to cedar pollen are just one indication of how this single-minded strategy has gone awry.”

It is cedar pollen season, and cedar pollen is here to fuck your life up.

I woke up on Tuesday with this horrible, deep chest cough.  I didn’t feel sick, I just couldn’t stop coughing.  I went to work as usual.  By Wednesday, I had coughed more than I have coughed in my entire life and my vocal chords went on strike.  I could barely speak and my coworkers looked at me like I was a dying frog every time I attempted to croak out “good morning”.  

“You sound HORRIBLE!” they would say.  To which I would attempt to communicate through a series of blinks and hand gestures because speaking was no longer something I was capable of.  If you know me, you know that this amounts to the greatest punishment I can imagine aside from maybe taking wine away from me.

By Wednesday, it hurt to breath and any attempts at speech outed me as the 80-year-old lifelong 5-packs a day smoker that I secretly am.  It also settled into my sinuses and every time I sneezed, I would cough for 5 solid minutes.

Thursday I started to feel a little better.  The coughing was starting to subside slightly, and I could actually make out a couple of audible syllables here and there.  Yay!  I survived my first cedar pollen attack intact (heh), and relief was on the horizon.

That is until I woke up on Friday.

Friday was my day off, to make up for traveling to Okinawa on a Sunday.  I instead spent the entire day waiting to be seen at the base medical clinic because my eardrums were most certainly about to burst.  I knew this because they were throbbing and every time I coughed or swallowed they sent a surge of pain and whispered “you’ve subjected us to 90’s pop music for the last time, bitch”. 

So long story long, I was sent home with a bag full of medication and a netipot which I am too afraid to use because I feel like it’s the pseudo-medical version of waterboarding and it will drown me in my bathroom.  Well, the medication worked wonders because it made me loopy and sleepy and I woke up this morning, Saturday, feeling brand new.

It’s early afternoon on Saturday here, and Jan has secret plans for us.  I don’t know what they are, aside from we’re hopping the train to Shinjuku in a couple hours.  This will be an early White Day present… White Day in Japan is celebrated exactly a month after Valentines Day.  On Valentines Day here, it is traditional for women to shower men with gifts, and they return the favor the next month on White Day.

Less complain-ey blog with pictures coming up this weekend after we get into whatever trouble we’re about to get into…

Since this was so complain-ey, shout-out to everyone I know who has dealt with serious medical conditions (love you Addie, if you’re reading this…).  You da real MVP.

Twenty Miles

Let me tell you how my husband and I willfully nearly killed ourselves.  “Oh boy,” you are likely musing to yourself.  “Did you guys hike Mount Fuji?!  Journey to a remote shrine?!  Ski down challenging runs in the mountains?!”

No.  None of those things.  We… walked.

In today’s edition of Dumb Shit We Do, we were trying to figure out how to get ourselves into some Tokyo trouble this weekend, as per usual.  Jan jokingly said, “I think our Pasmo (transit pass) cards are low, we could save money and just walk to Tokyo.”  Huh.  Well, a couple beers and an hour on Google Maps later, we decided we would walk from our front door in Sagamihara all the way to Shibuya in Tokyo which is about 33 kilometers (20 miles), because we really like adding trophies to our Things That Sounded Good At The Time wall.

While we usually sleep in on Saturday until at least noon like obese raccoons who like karaoke too much, we woke up at 8am.  We strapped on our walkin’ shoes and headed out on our journey, full of piss and vinegar.  I had my pedometer app going on my phone so we could track our progress.  Below you will find a Captain’s Log of events.  This is not hyperbole or exaggeration – these things actually happened.

Mile 1.5:  I am getting a sunburn from the blazing glow of my superior fitness level, because my feet don’t hurt.  Jan tries to air out his armpits and accidentally flings his tablet to the ground.  The tablet survives.

Miles 3:  The conversation flips between how cool we are for doing this, and how doing this makes us so cool.  We are prancing through the streets of Machida like a gazelle that just took a shit, except with one of those Snapchat filters that makes us look like Bambi and puts flowers in our hair.

Mile 5:  We are bobbing and weaving through random neighborhoods along the train line.  My right hip is starting to hurt but I say nothing because I am not a loser and my hip is fake news.  I would later find out that Jan’s ankle was in dire straits but he is also not a loser so said nothing.  We happened upon a Family Mart and decided we had earned ourselves an egg salad sandwich and a couple of road beers.

Mile 6:  My trust in Jan’s navigation skills are eroding as quickly as the ligaments in my ball-and-socket joint.  This mistrust is confirmed when we accidentally start wandering through a college campus.  Apparently drinking an Asahi is not acceptable on college campuses.  We are stopped by a security guard who says stuff in Japanese to which I respond, “wakarimasen” which means “I don’t understand” and also “please don’t take my beer.”  Our beers are confiscated along with our dignity.  

Mile 6.5:  We had to walk uphill.  “This is so easy, I’m not even sore!”  “Me neither!  Yee-haw!”  is how the conversation goes, as we contort our faces like Stepford wives and bury the agony into the depths of our bitter souls.

Mile 8:  I almost got hit by a truck because “GOD THESE TRUCKERS DRIVE LIKE FUCKING MANIACS HERE” and Jan responded with “Look at that stupid little kid in that stupid thing on his stupid mom’s bike.”  We are happy people, and my hip is not crumbling and Jan’s ankle is not in the throes of peril.

 

Mile 10.5:  We decide to take a break and get some food.  We stop in at a place that advertises having an English menu, which is super because then I don’t end up accidentally ordering a single soft-boiled egg and a side of scallions.  They do not have beer which is very unfortunate.  We order on a machine which spits out tickets and we sit down.  Like a dozen people who got there after us get their food, and we start to wonder if perhaps we do not understand how this works.  We stay because it feels too good to sit.  We finally discover that we accidentally ordered takeout, so we eat our meals out of Styrofoam containers at the bar like goddamn savages.  There are three dressings and I don’t know what any of them are.  Little kids are staring at us.  I use the bathroom before we leave, and the seat isn’t heated which is an unreasonably heartbreaking discovery.  My hip feels FINE!  It feels GREAT!  YAY LET’S KEEP WALKING I want to die.

Mile 12:  I’m not sure if it was some shift in the lunar cycle or something, but everyone and everything we walk and/or limp past is horrible.  I mean, we’re reasonable people so we refrain from punching faces and looting but man.  Hey lady on the blue bicycle with a right hip that doesn’t feel like it has a handful of acid-soaked rocks in it, why are you so goddamn smug.  Why are your boots so cute.  I hate you.  I would later come to find out that at this point, Jan’s ankle had committed seppuku and was dead.

Mile 13:  I point out a military helicopter above us.  Jan responds, “I hope it falls out of the sky and lands on top of me.”

Mile 14:  Nothing matters anymore and everything I thought to be true is a lie.  I can’t feel my feet and my husband is walking like a geriatric mule.  We decide to pop into a minute mart to get some ibuprofen, only to be reminded that alphabets here choose art over simplicity and we have no idea if these pills will make our pain go away or make us shit our pants.  We buy whiskey instead.

Mile 16:  I can smell the color blue and drugs don’t even exist here so that is weird.  

Mile 16.5:  Jan remembers that I am married to him so legally have to deal with him in sickness and in health, and informs me that he doesn’t even think he can make it to the nearest train station because his ankle is so dead.  I am disappointed because I am totally ready to walk 5 more miles HAHAHAHA nevermind I fell in love with him all over again because he made it okay for me to want to rip my entire leg off and cauterize the stump with a Bic lighter rather than walk any more.

Mile 18:  We are steps from the train station.  We are in a random neighborhood where tourists would never be.  We walk (I’m using that term loosely at this point) past a guy who says exactly what I think but do not say every time I see a Westerner here – “Hey, white people!  Where are you from??”  Come to find out he is an Italian tattoo artist staying with hosts in Tokyo who are from Oregon.  He was energetic and kind and when I showed him my pedometer app that showed how many miles we had walked he was very surprised and impressed.  Validation from a random stranger who spoke the Englishes made me feel as if our journey had not quite been in vain.  We bid him adieu and hobbled like pirates to the station.

Mile 18.5:  We arrive at our home station.  We consider stealing a scooter from the Pizza LA delivery fleet but instead decide to buy a pizza with hot dogs in the crust, and Jan accidentally punches me in the face while trying to tell the cashier that we’ll be waiting outside around the corner.  It was the least of my injuries, and retaliating at this point would be like setting fire to a swatted fly.  He could barely stand upright and his foot was visibly swollen through his shoes.  I am floating in and out of consciousness fantasizing about my couch.

Mile 19.1:  We arrive at home.  I pour a pint glass of wine, eat some weird shrimp mayonnaise pizza because this is my life now, and we watched Braveheart which I had never seen before.  Which was great, because there is no better way to wrap up a day of misery than watching a guy have his wife murdered and then be castrated.  Real upper, that movie.

Today:  I am eating cheese and drinking highballs because I built up a well-deserved calorie deficit yesterday, tomorrow is a federal holiday, and I intend to exploit that properly. 

Captain’s log, signing off.