Fifty-Nine Minutes

Last week, Army beat Navy in a college football match-up for the first time in 14 years. I have not been following college football this year, because the Huskies are doing great and the Ducks are embarrassing and all the games are on at like 2am on Sunday morning. This will be relevant later.


On Friday morning I was at my desk at work, knee-deep in schedules and milestone reports and excited that I was only hours away from another weekend of exploring Tokyo. The loudspeaker crackled and came alive - “Good morning. Please join us in the Fuji Room for the Town Hall at 0900.”


Town Hall meetings occur a couple times a year, when the Commander (your boss's boss's boss's boss) corrals the entire organization into a room and talks about stuff and you laugh at his jokes. Do you remember how excited you used to get when the bell would ring for recess? Imagine the opposite of that, and then add in the fact that you skipped breakfast and you're going to spend the entire next hour of your life mortified that your stomach is going to growl and everyone within a ten foot radius is going to be disgusted with you and shift uncomfortably in their seats and there is not a goddamn granola bar in sight to prevent this horror. That's pretty much what all Town Hall meetings are like.


I begrudgingly got up from my chair – grabbing my sweater which I would fashion around my midsection in an attempt to palliate the booming roar of my growling stomach – and trudged to the Fuji Room. As the Town Hall began, I played Tetris with my mind except the pieces were bags of flour and bottles of dashi and packages of dried mushrooms and I was actually reorganizing my pantry.


Back to footy-footy-football. Around the time my growling stomach registered on the Richter scale and every coworker within a ten foot radius had already uninvited me to the holiday party, I heard a phrase... a phrase which is so rare and so beautiful it doth awaken one from even the torture of being in close quarters with other humans while your body makes noises.


“Something-something Army something something Navy something something FIFTY-NINE MINUTE RULE.”


Fifty-nine minute rule is this elusive mistress who comes around a couple times a year to make you feel naughty. It's basically a paid early release and is utilized by Commanders at their discretion, usually during holidays, to boost morale and give us all a bit of a break. You work one minute of your final hour of work, then you take 59 minutes off. It's a glorious thing, and on Friday I got to enjoy it because Army did sports things harder than Navy sportsted and ultimately was the sportsiest and who cares I got off an hour early HOORAY!


I scooted my happy ass home to my husband and my kitten. Usually on Fridays, we meander up the road to our rockabilly izakaya in Sagamihara. I asked Jan what he felt like doing.


“Well, it's early. Wanna go to Tokyo?”


Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that the above phrase would be casually uttered and easily accomplished. F*&% yeah, I wanna go to Tokyo. Within five minutes we were out the door, walking to the Odakyu station to head to Shinjuku, from which we would walk to the famous Takeshita Dori in Harajuku to do some shopping.


After hopping on the Rapid Express train we reached Shinkuju Station – which is utilized by 3.6 million people PER DAY – and pretended to know where we were going with such commitment that we went the wrong way 13 times and the right way once.


I may have mentioned this in previous posts, but people stare at you here. Japan is 98.5% Japanese, and only 0.6% non-Asian. Considering I have a loud voice and a bellowing laugh and an offensively rumbling stomach, I especially stand out as a gaijin (foreigner) of the highest order. Living in Japan as a white person is like constantly walking around wondering if you have a booger in your nose or if your dress is tucked into your tights.


It underscores all of the latent insecurities of living in a foreign country, and it can start to bring you down a bit if you aren't careful. We decided to assuage this by popping into an Irish bar to drink a Guinness and hopefully shoot the shit with someone who spoke English.


We could not have wandered into a better place. We ordered a couple Jamesons on the rocks and struck up a conversation with the man sitting to my right, and the bartender – who knew each other. Both were from Dublin and spoke in Irish accents so Irish that I almost accused them of faking it but then realized that Irish people don't fuck around so decided not to risk it. The man to my right was drinking a pint before playing the fiddle in an Irish bluegrass performance which was being set up at the front of the bar, and the bartender actually owned the joint and has lived in Tokyo with his Canadian wife for that last 14 years. He went from heavily accented English to flawless Japanese while explaining the menu when a local customer came up to the bar. Whodathunk.


That was all it took to whet our appetite for things that felt like home. On our walk to Harajuku, we passed by the most elusive of establishments.... A MEXICAN RESTAURANT. All of you back in the states, I hate you and curse you to all have seams in your socks that bug your pinky toes because you are SURROUNDED by awesome Mexican food that is cheap as dirt and you don't know how lucky you are. We walked into this restaurant with the intent of getting a couple beers and splitting an appetizer. HA. How adorable we were in our ignorance.


(prices converted to dollars from yen, roughly)


2 Modelo Especials - $18
Chips and Salsa - $9
Our regret – Priceless


Seriously?! In the states, $18 would get you a 24 pack of Modelo. Chips and salsa are free at any restaurant as long as you have the ability to sit. Lesson learned – I am not in Japan to cling to the fading beacon of Mexican food that was so prevalent in my former life. It's time to turn a new leaf, because I could have gotten 16 plates of high quality nigiri for what I paid for a beer and chips.


So, we were 1-1 on attempts at feeling at home. I was starting to think – gasp – that maybe I should acknowledge that Home has been redefined.


There is more to this story – it involves German weiners and IKEA – but it's gotten late and so you'll have to check back tomorrow. Running theme continues – Japan is absolutely awesome.  Oh yeah - and they love their motorcycles here.