Study abroad in Japan

Kiyoe had said that she would be in late on this day since her kids were off for the anniversary of their school’s founding. I took the 8:20 bus and set to work on my project when I arrived at the laboratory. I had the first draft completed by the time Kiyoe came in at 10:00. Soon after this, she asked me to come to the animal facility to watch them work with the mice. She was working on a mouse model of Wolf-Hirschorn Syndrome in which an equivalent gene deletion had been introduced into mice. She had to weigh the mice that carried this mutation once a day in order to monitor their growth.

Going to the animal facility was quite a production! We walked to a nearby building that had to be entered by holding one’s I.D. card up to a scanner and placing one’s finger on a different scanner. Once inside, we changed our shoes and put on slippers that were provided at the entrance. After going up an elevator and winding through some corridors, we arrived at the mouse room. We entered a vestibule where we put on full-body protective gear, including gowns, hairnets, gloves and masks. We also traded our slippers for a pair of yellow rubber boots. You would have thought we were working with the Ebola virus instead of weighing a dozen mice! When our work was completed, we reversed the entire process until we had returned to our original pair of shoes and exited the building.

Upon returning to my desk, I set about fixing certain aspects of the first draft of my project from that morning that needed to be changed. About 12:30, Kiyoe suggested that we have lunch at her house, seeing as her kids were home for the day. Before we could do this, however, we had to drive to the store to stock up on lunch supplies. The grocery store was in a multistoried building with an attached parking garage and was even bigger than the one that I had been to in my neighborhood. Kiyoe bought sushi, fish eggs, shrimp, roast beef, bread, and desert, among other things. We then went to her house, which was fairly close to the University. She had warned me the previous day that she might invite me over, so I had brought gifts for the family. I gave her a bottle of liqueur that Trudy and I had purchased in Galena, Illinois and gave each of her two boys toys from America. Her oldest boy, Ryu, was 12, while her youngest, Sage, was 9. They were very excited about the gift and proceeded to get out their respective photo albums to show me pictures of when they were babies. Soon, Kiyoe had assembled lunch and we all sat down at the table. Kiyoe asked Ryu to show me how to eat the shrimp, which were raw and needed to have their heads and legs removed in order to eat them.

After lunch, Kiyoe needed to go to the police station so she could fill out a report about Sage’s bicycle accident that he was involved in the week before I came (he was doing much better, but had broken his jaw riding down a hill and into a pole). We went to a mall that came complete with a working police station within it, as well as having its own attached parking garage (parking can be hard to find in Japan). After getting the form, Kiyoe said we needed to spend 100 yen somewhere to validate the parking. I remembered that I needed miso soup, so we headed to the enclosed supermarket. In addition to the soup, we saw a display for a mix to make mabo dofu, which Kiyoe suggested that I get that so that I could try making the dish at home.

Kiyoe dropped me off at work about 3:30 and said she would be in after 5, when her husband got home to take care of the kids. She said I was welcome to go home anytime that I liked. Despite this, I ended up staying until the last bus left for the Toyonaka campus. Back home, I took out my mabo dofu and whipped up a batch. I sat in front of the T.V. and ate my dinner while watching the Osaka Tigers play baseball, although I wasn’t sure from the telecast whether they were winning or losing. At 11 pm, I went to bed.

I did wake up at 2 am, just long enough to switch the water heater on, then fell asleep again quickly and slept until 5:30. I turned the rice maker on, hoping that it would work now that I had given it time enough to forgive me for unplugging it as well as pressing all the wrong buttons. There was finally hot water coming out of the pipes, and it had only taken 3 days to figure it out! I also solved another problem that I had experienced from the beginning- the plug for the bathtub didn’t fit, so that it hadn’t yet been able to hold water. This hadn’t been an issue when the water was ice cold, but over time it became a bit more important. The previous day I had entered a “100 yen shop” in Umeda to look for another plug. Although what I ended up buying was actually designed to help open jar lids, I figured that it would serve the purpose. It was a round sheet of plastic that looked like what a person would put in the bottom of sinks in America to plug them up. As I suspected, the plastic piece worked just fine! After I took a bath, I saw that the rice maker was behaving as well- things were looking up for my first full day on the job!

It had been raining all night as far as I could tell and it was still raining on and off when I left the house, so I took an umbrella. I took the 8 am bus and got to work before most people had arrived. When Kiyoe got in, she suggested that I put my most recent form to good use and open my Post Office account. There was a Post Office in the hospital that was connected to the Medical School. Many people in Japan use the Post Office for their banking needs, in addition to mailing things. Every Post Office in the country has ATM machines that dispense money from Post Office accounts. Since we had arrived a little before it opened at 9, Kiyoe and I went to Starbucks and had a coffee. She apologized that it was so expensive, but I assured her that the prices were nearly identical to those found in America. When the office opened, I was finally able to open my account.

Upon our return to the lab, Kiyoe wanted to train me how to pour agarose gels. Now, I have poured literally hundreds of agarose gels during my career, but none according to strict Japanese rules. While I might have been tempted to simply point out where all the supplies were to someone and let them go at it, Kiyoe walked me through the whole process until we each had poured two gels. The main thing that stood out to me was the rinsing procedures for the glassware that we used. Before using each piece of glassware, we rinsed it three times with distilled water; after we had finished with a particular piece, we rinsed it 10 times in tap water and three more times in distilled water. It was important to Kiyoe that we count each time we rinsed it so as to avoid using the wrong number of rinses. After we had poured the gels, Kiyoe gave me another project to work on involving the computer.

At lunchtime, we went to the hospital cafeteria once again. This was not the only place to eat lunch at the Medical School, but it was probably the most economical. Green tea, for instance, was free; it came out of a fountain machine that was located near the cashier’s station. Kiyoe pointed out a Chinese-inspired dish called mabo dofu that was featured that day, but warned that it was very spicy. I got it, it was delicious but not particularly spicy- I think even Trudy could have eaten it, and she was definitely not one for spicy foods! Even the curry dishes in Japan did not have a strong spicy taste, unlike their Indian counterparts. The meal came with miso soup, the one thing I realized that I forgot to buy during my trip to the store!

For the rest of the afternoon, I worked on the project that I had. It was actually quite interesting focusing exclusively on research for that long, I usually only had short breaks in between classes, as well as my other responsibilities, at Monmouth College to do some research. At 6 pm, Kiyoe stopped by my desk and said that I could leave if I wanted to, that I had done a lot already that day. Because I was busy working on something, and because I wanted to have put in a full day on my first “real” day at work, I kept working and caught the last (7:15) bus home. Kiyoe told me that she usually put in 12 hour days four days a week, but left “early” on Fridays, whatever that means. She then put in half days on Saturdays as well. The last bus to the Toyonaka campus was very full; I didn’t know how everyone waiting in line would fit onto the bus. To top it off, when it arrived- it was already quite full with people from the other side of campus! Somehow everyone crowded on- I ended up standing near the front of the bus, and we were on our way.

Lunch had been quite filling so I was hungry, but not starved, when I reached home at 7:40. I made myself some ramen noodles (they had scrambled eggs mixed in with them), some rice crackers, and a banana, and changed into my pajamas. I read a little but was tired, so I went to bed around 9:30.

I had warned Trudy that I would probably not be calling her any more during her lunch hour, but this ended up not being true. I woke up at 2:30 am, tossed and turned for a bit, and dialed up Trudy. It was nice having wireless internet at home, even if I didn’t exactly know who the signal belonged to! I finished my grading after we hung up and then submitted the grades to Monmouth College using their online system. I did fall asleep for a while longer but finally got up at 5:30. I fixed myself some tea and was looking forward to a hot bath, but the water was cold again. Not to be outdone, I boiled two kettles of hot water on the stove, dumped it into the bath, and did my best not to freeze. My rice maker was also acting up again, so I abandoned the rice completely and fried up a fish, along with an egg, on the stove.

I had promised Kiyoe that I would be in bright and early, so I caught the first bus (at 8 am, boarding from a line in the back) to Suita and sat down at my desk. Anna, the girl who occupied the desk next to me, was from Singapore; she briefly introduced herself and then hurried off to class. Kiyoe soon arrived and I told her of my water heater problems. We apparently had experienced a slight misunderstanding: she apologized that she had shut it off to save energy at night and that I should have turned it back on in the morning, despite my earlier promise to not touch it. Kiyoe then gave me my first assignment: to do some computer-based research on a gene that her lab was interested in. Deletion of this gene was known to cause a disease known as Wolf-Hirschorn Syndrome, a form of mental retardation that is accompanied by a variety of other developmental disorders. Having performed previous research in the field of bioinformatics, as this type of computer-based research is called, it was just the type of work that I was cut out for!

At 10:30 or so we went to the Post Office to open an account in which to deposit my paychecks into. Alas, they required another form (proof of address) that had to be obtained at, where else but the Toyonaka City Municipal Hall! Instead of Kiyoe driving me again, we came up with an alternate plan- Kiyoe discovered that one could also obtain the same form at a branch office which could be reached by riding a bus from campus and agreed to point me in the right direction after lunch. At 12:30, we had lunch in the cafeteria in the Medical School’s hospital. I had sukiyaki, a type of soup with beef, tofu, and cabbage in it.

After we ate, I set out for Senri-Chuo where the city branch office was located. Unfortunately, Kiyoe could not accompany me, so she sent me off with the name of the bus as well as the form I needed written on a paper in kanji (Chinese characters), along with a map to the office (in Japanese, of course). She said that if I was going to go there, that I should take the rest of the day off and leave for my midweek church service from that station. I found the bus with no trouble, located the branch office, and soon had the form I needed in hand. I then boarded the train and took it to the center of Osaka in order to switch trains to one which headed in the direction of the church building.

The arrangement of the trains in Osaka is similar to that of New York in that one has to go in to the center of town in order to head back out to the periphery. Even though it was only a 30-minute drive between Staten Island, where I had lived, and Brooklyn, where I had worked, it was 1 hour and 40 minutes by ferry and subway between the two, going through Manhattan. The center of Osaka, called Umeda, reminded me of Manhattan as well. I had plenty of time to kill before church (6 hours), so I explored Umeda, as Kiyoe had suggested. It, like Shibuya in Tokyo, was a hotbed of activity. There were broad avenues lined with skyscrapers as well as narrow alleys jammed with restaurants, shops, and arcades. People were everywhere and bicycles and scooters darted amongst the crowds. Amidst all this, I stumbled upon a few serene Shinto shrines tucked away behind alleyways, like islands of peacefulness in the middle of all the hubbub. I eventually made my way to a 9-story mall with an equally large Ferris wheel on the top of it. Despite my fear of heights, I decided to ride it, which ended up being quite an experience! I could see the whole city from the top of the wheel- I tried to make out the area in which I now lived, but I could not tell for sure where it was. When I returned to the safety of the ground, I bought a bento at a convenience store and then boarded the train that would take me to church. Between the train station and the church was a river that one could cross over on a footbridge. Since I was still 2 hours ahead of schedule, I sat beside the river and ate my dinner.

I showed up to church 50 minutes early, just as the brother named Takashi was opening the building. I helped set up chairs and he prepared a video they were going to watch that night. While the church had originally planned to watch a video in Japanese, Takashi told me that he also had one that was in English accompanied by Japanese translation, and he would play that instead. 9 others filed in at various times, to which I introduced myself, in turn, including Nori and his fiancée, an Australian named Fiona. I did my best to sing the songs (one was in English- “Rise Up O Men of God”!), and then during announcements, I stood up and introduced myself to everyone. I was able to understand the video fine but found it hard to concentrate since I was so tired. Church ended about 9:15 pm, by which time it had started to rain. Nori gave three others and me a ride to the train station and we each debarked at our respective stops, mine of which was the last one out of our group. A brother asked me if I knew how to get to my house from the train station- I said I could probably find it. I was wrong!

I knew that the university was east of the train station, so I took the east exit and walked in what I thought was the right direction. A main thoroughfare lined with shops soon gave way to a residential neighborhood that was more akin to a maze. A few times I hit dead ends and had to circle back to an area that I had already been through. It was actually quite quaint, reminding me of something out of “Memoirs of a Geisha”, which I had finally seen once I had returned to the U.S. from my first trip to Japan. I wasn’t afraid, even though it was after 10 pm and I had no idea where I was going. I reasoned that I could not stay lost forever, could I? But I was very tired, it was still raining, and I desperately wanted to be home. Eventually, I asked a man who was walking by where Osaka University was. He indicated the way back to the train station and said, “Go up the slope”. I found the train station once again and this time walked in the correct direction. Just to be sure, I asked directions again from a young couple standing at a bus stop. They directed me to a path across the street that soon gave way to a cobble stone walkway which led directly into campus. I was very pleased when I reached a part of campus I recognized, one that I had seen during that first wait for the campus bus. I returned home about 10:45, even though the trip from church should have taken about 30 minutes. I was in bed by 11 and was pretty sure I could sleep through the night this time!

I woke up a little before 2 am and went to the bathroom. I had trouble falling back to sleep and eventually realized that Trudy would be home for lunch- so I called her over the internet using Skype. Around 3 am, I fell back to sleep and slept 2 more hours.

I fixed myself a bowl of rice, fish, and the mystery yogurt for breakfast. I had some trouble with the rice maker in that it did not reset from the night before and turned out mushy rice porridge instead of the sticky rice that I expected. This was fine with me, since rice porridge is actually a real breakfast eaten in the Kansai area in which I now lived; it brought back memories of my first breakfast in Japan. The fish that I had thought was steamed turned out to be quite raw, so I filleted it and heated it in the microwave. Kiyoe later told me the yogurt flavor, which read “aro”, was actually aloe flavor, something that is eaten in Japan for its positive effects on one’s health.

I had to wait around the house for the man from the gas company, who was set to arrive between 9 and noon, so I organized my clothes and books and then read for a while. The man came about 10:20 and turned the gas on but he spoke no English whatsoever and my own gas-related conversations in Japanese were rather limited as well. He showed me a sensor and seemed to be indicating that it was a detector for gas leaks. Luckily, I had practiced saying “Is my hot water heater on?” He checked, but there was no hot water coming out of the pipes. He played around with the spigots for a while but soon gave up and told me someone would return between 5 and 6 to fix the problem. As soon as he had gone, I got ready and headed to catch the bus to the Suita campus.

The bus stop was no more than a 10-minute walk from our house, but I arrived just in time to see the 11 am bus pulling out. Since the busses ran every 20 minutes, I took the opportunity to walk around campus for a while. I noted the location of the cafeteria as well as a noodle shop and bought a can of papaya juice while I waited for the bus. When one pulled up, I asked the driver (in Japanese, he spoke no English) “Is this the bus to the Suita campus?” He indicated that it was, so I walked around the front of the bus to get on. I realized too late that one only boarded the bus from the back. There was a transportation official directing people onto the bus who made me wait until everyone got on from the proper direction. I quickly circled around, joined the line correctly, and boarded the bus. At precisely 11:20, the official blew his whistle and the bus pulled away from the stop.

The ride to the Suita campus was about 30 minutes, during which time I watched out the widow with interest. I could see the mountains which surrounded Osaka to the north from the bus route as well as many interesting shops and restaurants. Once I arrived in Suita, I went by memory to find Kiyoe’s building. I finally entered a building that looked like the picture I had taken in January during my visit and asked the security guard that manned a station in the lobby, “Where is this department?” (in Japanese, of course), indicating the Division of Gene Therapy Science on an email from Kiyoe. Luckily, I was in the lobby of the very building that I would now be working in; I just needed to go to the 10th floor!

Kiyoe took me around and introduced me to people and then we went to lunch in a restaurant that was located in a neighboring building. I had the special: curry rice and a salad, the same thing I had gotten the day I met with Kiyoe during my trip the previous year, this time being mindful to eat the meal using a spoon. After lunch, I got on the internet to find out where I had to go to register as an alien- something I had to do before opening a bank account. Kiyoe looked at the addresses, called a few of the locations, and printed up several versions of maps showing the local area before we set out for the office. We left at 2 pm on what should have been a 20-minute trip to the office. Kiyoe, however, would be the first to admit that she was not good at driving around Osaka. She had politely declined to pick me up at the airport due to her lack of driving skills, I had then asked Nori to do it and he obliged. After about and hour and a half of taking wrong turns, turning around in tight places, and narrowly missing cars, bicycles, and people alike, we finally located the Toyonaka City Municipal Office. I filled out a form in order to receive my registration card the following month; the total amount of time that I took at the office was about 5 minutes.

Luckily, the office was located on the same road that Nori had used when he brought me home from the airport, so I helped direct Kiyoe to my house with no more problems. We arrived there around 4 pm and Kiyoe said she would stay there until the gas man came so there would be no more misunderstandings. I served her some lemon soda, along with some green tea, then turned on the Sumo matches on T.V. Before too long, Kiyoe was sound asleep on the couch. I decided to take the opportunity to finish the book that I had been reading that morning. The gas man’s arrival woke Kiyoe, he came in, looked at the pipes, turned some, and soon I had hot water coming out of the sink and tub. He indicated that I should not touch the pipes myself and that I should also not touch the controls to the hot water heater, so as not to mess anything up. He and Kiyoe both left within 5 minutes of each other and I set about making myself dinner.

I fixed myself a bowl of ramen soup, a pork manju, and rice cakes for dinner. I was exhausted, so I closed the windows, put on my pajamas, and got in bed while I graded final exams. At 7 pm, I couldn’t stay awake another second, so I went to sleep.

We passed over China on our approach to Japan. I stared out the window hoping to catch a glimpse of the Great Wall but all I could make out were mountains and lots of factories spewing liberal amounts of smoke into the air.

We landed in Japan a full 70 minutes before my itinerary had claimed we would be there. After passing through passport control, customs, and exchanging $ for yen (this time not getting such a raw deal), Nori was there to pick me up from the airport. He had asked me if I remembered what he looked like and I told him I did, but to be honest- I would have been hard pressed to pick him out from the crowd. He must have had the same problem but finally came up to me as I was just sitting back down from standing in a line for currency exchange and asked if I was the right person. Nori drove me to Osaka but was not completely sure on the route to the University. He took a few wrong turns so that we ended up seeing much more of the city than anticipated. Getting turned around didn’t really bother me, however, since I was in no particular hurry and liked seeing more of Osaka. We finally found the International House at Osaka University 1 hour and 45 minutes after being picked up at the airport. Unfortunately, it was now 12:15, and the office that had the key to my house was closed for lunch. Since Nori had to be at work by 2 pm (he teaches at a juku, an afternoon “cram school”, where Japanese students go after school to prepare for the difficult entrance exams that they must take to enter both high school and college), he left me and my luggage at the International House to wait for the office to open.

At 1 pm, the office reopened and gave me the key but could not give me good directions to the house. Eventually, the staff called Kiyoe at work, who said she would come meet me there, since she had already been to see the house and knew where it was located. Since it would take Kiyoe 30 minutes to get to campus from the Medical School, I decided to walk to the Family Mart convenience store and get a bento for lunch. Since it was a beautiful day, I ate my lunch on a bench outside of the International House; Kiyoe showed up shortly after I had finished. We soon found my new home, which actually seemed really big for a Japanese house. The house had been unused for a period of time, however, and was in need of a good vacuuming. Kiyoe called the various utility companies on her cell phone in order to get the water, electricity and gas turned on, however the latter company told her that they could not send anyone by until the next morning at the earliest. Soon, Kiyoe had to leave to get her son to a doctor’s appointment and I told her to go ahead, assuring her that I would be fine by myself.

My first instinct when she left was to take a nice hot bath. That wasn’t in the cards, though, due to my lack of gas to heat the water. Because I really needed one, I settled for a frigidly cold shower and soon set out to find the grocery store. The store, called Nissho, was a good walk from our house and ended up being a very interesting place. It was basically like the one I had gone to in Kyoto- with lots of activity and various people hawking their food products. Think of it as a cross between the people that give out samples at the grocery store and the carny folk that try to get you to play their respective games. I managed to find all of the basic staples: eggs, sushi, seaweed, steamed fish for breakfast, ramen, rice crackers, a big dumpling, green tea, yogurt of some unknown flavor, carrots, bananas, and rice, all for 4000 yen. At 1100 yen a bag, the rice was by far the most expensive item on my list. I managed to vacuum the house when I returned home, while I waited for the rice maker and tea brewer to do their thing. I then ate sushi, rice topped with seaweed, along with green tea for my first meal in my new home.

Having discovered early on that most airline specials to Japan had a 30 day maximum stay as one stipulation, I had opted for the one airline that had no maximum stay whatsoever: Alitalia. The only catch was that I had to fly to Osaka via Italy, which was definitely not the most direct route from Chicago. However, since I was in no particular hurry, and welcomed the chance to save $400 as well as see Italy for the first time, I found myself on Altitlia flight 794, en route to Milan. I hadn’t seen much out the plane window on the way over- I had watched as we flew over the Midwest but had missed the Ocean entirely due to the cloud cover as well as my attempts to sleep. I actually slept little, maybe a couple of hours despite the sleeping pills I had washed down with an Italian beer during dinner. Regarding this choice of beverage, I figured that although almost everyone has had some Italian wine during their lifetimes, how often do you hear of someone having Italian beer! I had also glimpsed the Alps briefly as we made our approach to Italy: snow-capped peaks which reminded me of the Rockies. But it was not until we were making our approach to land at Malpensa airport that I was able to get my first good impressions of Italy. It was, as far as I could tell- exactly like Central Illinois! The Alps had completely disappeared and in their place were miles and miles of fields covering land as flat as a pancake. The coaches of the Illinois State girl’s volleyball team were sitting in front of me and we joked that perhaps they had flown the plane in circles for 9 hours and that we were, in fact, still in Central Illinois. Malpensa Airport is a 40-minute train ride from Milan but you wouldn’t know you were anywhere near a city when you land there. Again, the farms and fields were all I could see around it.

We had landed at 7 am, but it took me a long time to find my way through the airport, cashing in some $ for Euros, getting a measly 19.65 Euros for $40 (the dollar was particularly weak against the Euro and I suspected that the airport money changers were charging a ridiculous processing fee), depositing my bags at the “left luggage” counter, and finally boarding the train to Milan. I boarded the 8:23 train that would arrive in Milan about 9. My second impression of Italy was that it was a lot dirtier than I had pictured. Italy was beautiful the various “chick flicks” I had watched with Trudy, but I couldn’t help but notice the omnipresent trash and graffiti. The train ride was through beautiful countryside and quaint little towns, but the wall lining the tracks was a never-ending stretch of graffiti the entire ride. I snapped some pictures of the countryside in order to prove that it was almost identical to home. My family, unfortunately, would not be getting a chance to visit Italy, since the price of the tickets on Alitalia had more than doubled to take the same route six weeks later, and I was forced to get them tickets on Northwest Airlines, instead.

At last, 2 hours after I had arrived, I stood in downtown Milan. This area was filled with narrow streets, statues, fountains, and sites such as an old castle and cathedral. The graffiti had luckily all but disappeared, although the town still had a gray, slightly dingy look to it. Perhaps that is because the buildings are so old compared to anything we see in America. Since I only had 90 minutes before I had planned to attend a church service in Milan, I began an express tour of all the sites I wanted to see. Walking at a fast clip and snapping pictures like mad, I walked to the Duomo Cathedral, through the central plaza, and finally through the Castle itself and around the surrounding grounds. I got slightly lost once, mainly since it was nearly impossible to make out any landmarks due a combination of narrow streets as well as relatively tall buildings.

I made it to the church service with about 10 minutes to spare after having walked approximately 3 miles on my tour. The service was great- there were about 5 Americans who were part of the 40 member church. A couple that sat next to me took turns translating for me. The wife, an English teacher, translated the communion message, while her husband, a pharmaceutical representative, translated the main message. After we had sung a few songs, the wife asked me, “Are you sure you don’t speak any Italian? You pronounce the words very well!” Maybe it was my ethnic heritage coming through (my mother was a Vignali), or just being thankful to be able to read a foreign language written in a Roman alphabet (that would soon change in Japan). Service went slightly long, until about 12:30, and I became increasingly concerned about whether I could still get to the airport two hours in advance of my departing flight. Luckily, the wife of the man I had originally made contact with in Milan was going to her parents’ house in the direction of the airport, and could drop me at about the halfway point, where the train ride was cut to 20 minutes. Her 3-year-old son rode in the back of the car and continually asked questions in Italian: “Are we going to grandmas’? Where is Japan? Are we going to eat there today?” I caught the 1:16 train from the Sardona station and arrived back at the airport about 1:45. Luckily, the lines through security weren’t long, and I ended up with 30 minutes to spare before boarding my flight to Osaka.

Morning saw yet another trip to Denny’s for breakfast, my third trip there in a 24-hour period. While the Hilton had a selection of very nice restaurants, they were, in my opinion, as overpriced as the movie theaters, if not more so. I did get adventurous and order the “Hawaiian breakfast” for a change from a more traditional Japanese one. This came with spam, eggs, and rice, in addition to a salad. A Yasaka van then took us back in the direction of the Imperial Palace, to Toyo High School, where we were reunited with the rest of the students, who were just returning from their home stays. At 9:30, we all met with a number of officials from the school, giving and receiving gifts and listening to a speech that Ken had prepared in Japanese. At 10, we were treated to a performance by the school cheerleaders, who were on their way to L.A. to participate in an international cheerleading competition, reportedly having achieved 3rd place in all of Japan. For the next 20 minutes, two dozen cheerleaders demonstrated their spirited routines to us in the school gymnasium. Afterward, we thanked the school officials profusely and then boarded a bus for our last stop before heading to the airport.

The bus took us to Odaiba, literally the newest district of Tokyo, having been built on an artificial island that was formed in Tokyo Bay. There, we spent the next two hours in a massive mall, once again experiencing the more modern side of Japan. While I wasn’t particularly inclined to buy anything, I had a great time window shopping in the (mostly upscale) shops in the mall. Attached to the mall itself was a huge building that housed a car dealership on the upper floor! A few of us took turns posing in some of the fantasy cars that were housed there, and one could even take a drive in a tiny “smart car” which ran along a track that encircled the building. For lunch, we ate at the “Doggy Deli” which not only specialized in hot dogs, it encouraged people to bring their own dogs into the restaurant with them. One man had four tiny dogs dressed in little coats that he was pushing in a stroller as he went through the line. I felt conspicuous not having a dog in tow, but still ordered a Parisian Dog, a foot-long hot dog baked in a tiny baguette, complete with ketchup and mustard inside. Finding that it was quite good, I tried a curry dog as well, this was similar to the Parisian one, but with a curry sauce on the inside. I decided that, although I liked hot dogs and also liked curry, I was not enamored with the mixture of the two.

We left the shopping complex at 1 pm for the hour-long drive to Narita International Airport, on the outskirts of Tokyo, where we said our final thanks and goodbyes to our driver, as well as our tour guide, both of which spoke very little English. As we waited for our 4:40 pm flight, Kristin and I noticed that a gift shop was giving away free samples of sake in an unabashed effort to sell some bottles to tourists before they returned home. We therefore participated in a tasting of a number of different kinds, learning that they all didn’t taste the same and finally finding that we had a particular taste for the $80/bottle variety. Despite these preferences, Kristin ended up buying a somewhat less expensive variety to take home with her. The plane ride home was, mercifully, almost 2 hours shorter than the one to Japan had been, due to the prevailing winds being with us, rather than against us. Once again, I slept little on the flight, watching movies or talking with the students who flanked me on the way back. We landed in Chicago around 2:20 pm on Sunday afternoon, where my family was anxiously waiting for me. Their own time in Japan would come soon enough.

I had wanted to visit the Tsukiji Fish Market, the busiest in the world, but my guide book had said that one needed to get there at the crack of dawn in order to see any action. Since I had been unable to convince either Don or Kristin to leave that early on another tour, I had decided to go there on my own. I must have been getting used to the time change, since I awoke before 6 without setting an alarm, around the time I would normally wake up at home. I quickly got ready and quietly slipped out of the room. After the trip to Disney Sea, I more confident about navigating the Tokyo subway system, but realized on the last leg of my journey that I actually had no idea how to find the fish market once I arrived at the closest station. As I exited the subway car, I spied a man wearing a pair of rubber boots who had also just gotten off. Concluding that he was heading to the fish market himself, I decided that I would follow him at a distance. Sure enough, the man rounded the corner and headed down a hill, soon disappearing into a warehouse which was lined with hundreds of stalls that were selling various types of seafood.

I walked through this warehouse to find another, mostly deserted, one behind it. There, workers were using forklifts to arrange stacks of 4 foot-long tuna, finally loading them into the backs of trucks for shipment. Since it was after 7 am by this time, I had missed the daily auctions where sea food is unloaded from fishing vessels at daybreak and then sold to the highest bidder. The stacked fish already had Japanese characters painted onto their sides to indicate who had purchased them. I felt that I was somehow intruding, but the workers ignored me as I wandered around the warehouse, taking pictures. Likewise, no one seemed to notice me as I returned to the original, large warehouse to finish looking around, even though I was apparently the only camera-wielding foreigner in the area. I was intrigued by the bins of every variety of fish, in addition to the clams, oysters, conch, octopus, and squid on display. Vendors were mostly using large knives to cut the large fish into pieces, but some could be seen using band saws to accomplish this task. I couldn’t let myself get too engrossed with the intriguing sights, however, since I had to keep an eye out for the ubiquitous forklifts which continued to dart in and out of the throngs of people, in addition to large wooden carts loaded with seafood that were being pulled around by dock workers.

I returned to the hotel in time to have breakfast at the nearby Denny’s as well as to embark on a walking tour of Shinjuku with Don and Kristin. While Shinjuku on a Saturday morning was not able to approach the sheer levels of intensity found in Shibuya at night, the buildings and displays were still interesting. One particular sign caught my eye: it was for a health clinic located on the 4th floor of a building which featured a caricature of a nurse holding a syringe that was as long as she was tall. I wondered how many Americans would frequent a clinic with a similar commitment to truth in advertising. Our walk also took us past the main kabuki theater in Tokyo, but the show being advertised was for a modern singer, not the highly stylized Japanese drama for which the theater was named. We then poked our heads into one of the many Pachinko parlors which lined the streets. It was difficult for us to understand the Japanese obsession with watching small metal balls clink their way down a slot machine-sized interface filled with tiny metal pegs. Yet, dozens of people were packed into the noisy, garish, smoke-filled surroundings, doing just that. We suspected that Pachinko was adored more for one’s ability to escape from the rigors of everyday life in Japan than for the promise of minor amounts of cash and prizes that could be won from playing.

By noon, it was time for me to venture off on my own once again, this time to meet an old friend. Hitoshi had worked in the same laboratory at the National Institutes of Health as Kiyoe and I had. He was now a professor at Waseda University, very close to Shinjuku. I took the subway a few stops away from the hotel, to Takadanobaba station. I liked the sound of the name, which referred to an ancient horse track that had been adored by one of the shogun’s concubines. Hitoshi met me at the station and took me to a nearby Italian restaurant, where his entire laboratory group of two dozen graduate students was waiting for us. There he treated me to delicious lunch, while his students took turns sitting next to me and grilling me about my life as a professor in America. After we finished eating, it was a 15 minute walk to Waseda’s engineering campus, where I was given a tour of Hitoshi’s labs. Just as we reached campus, it started pouring rain, so I was grateful for the opportunity to duck inside my friend’s building.

Hitoshi’s labs were not unlike those that I had seen at Osaka University, except that they seemed a bit larger and Hitoshi, unlike Kiyoe, had his own private office. I pondered the role Japanese societal norms may have played in the fact that Kiyoe had been relegated to a subordinate position with a shared office, while she had been senior to both Hitoshi and me when we were undergoing our postdoctoral training together. Hitoshi had wanted to show me around Tokyo, but since the rain had picked up considerably by that time, we decided to go to a museum, instead. He then proceeded to select four of his graduate students to accompany us. Since the six of us could not fit into the tiny car that one of them was driving, Hitoshi and I took a taxi to the Edo-Tokyo Museum, near the historic section of Tokyo called Asakusa, meeting his students there.

The title Edo-Tokyo was a perfect description of the focus of the museum we then visited. Edo being the name of the small fishing village that was chosen by the first shogun to be the new seat of government, far removed from the traditional seat of power in Kyoto, which was later transformed into modern Tokyo, the “Eastern Capital”. We started our tour by crossing a life-sized recreation of the wooden Nihombashi Bridge, the main entrance to old Edo. Most of the following replicas were in miniature, with the exception of typical peasant living space, a print shop, as well as the old kabuki theater. We spent about 2 hours going through the whole museum, during which I learned a lot about Tokyo’s history. At 5:30, just as the museum was set to close, we all took turns posing in the various modes of transportation that had been used in the area, from the palanquins used to carry around high officials during the Edo period to the rickshaws that were first introduced to the world in Tokyo, starting in the late 19th century.

Since it was still pouring rain as we left the museum, Hitoshi insisted that I take the umbrella I had borrowed from his laboratory with me back to my hotel. One of his students happened to be going in the same direction, so he offered to ride the trains with me and make sure that I knew my way back. By the time I arrived at the hotel about an hour later, Don, Kristin, and Christie had already picked up something for dinner, so I headed off into the rain once again to get some for myself. Since Denny’s was the closest restaurant as well as one which I already knew how to get to it, I decided to go there once again. Now that I was holding an umbrella, I was introduced to the Japanese custom of coating your umbrella with a thin plastic sheet, irreverently referred to by fellow gaijin as an “umbrella condom”, before entering the restaurant. After all, dripping water from the outside onto the floor of an indoor space would be considered quite rude. Baring this, umbrellas were usually left in racks outside of the building that one had entered, with little fear that they would inadvertently disappear while you were inside.

Back at the hotel, Kristin and I discussed the entertainment options for our last night in Japan. She had wanted to see the movie “Memoirs of a Geisha”, which had just come out in Japan under the name “Sayuri”, the name of the main character. It was not uncommon in Japan to change the title of American movies in order to make them more appealing to the Japanese market. Other than that, they were typically shown in English, with Japanese subtitles. We both viewed this as a fitting end to our amazing journey to Japan. When we asked the concierge where it was playing, however, we found that, although it was not yet 8 pm on a Saturday, the last showing had already occurred in the Shinjuku area. He said that we would have to travel to Roppongi in order to see it and that the price was 1800 yen per person! Having lived in New York, I was not entirely unfamiliar with the concept of a $9 movie, but twice that seemed a little steep to me. Between the rain, the prospect of taking public transportation yet again, as well as the exorbitant price of the movie, we decided to stick around the hotel for the rest of the evening, instead.

The restaurant atop the hostel was mostly deserted the next morning when I had breakfast around 8 am. Kristin had also awoken fairly early, but Don was nowhere to be seen, and nary a student had ventured out yet, most having arrived back at the hostel after we had. While I ordered a traditional Japanese breakfast, Kristin opted for the “Westran breakfast”, as it was listed in the menu. Looking back, this probably should have been a sign that no one at the restaurant had any clue what people ate for breakfast in “Westran” countries such as the U.S. When it came, the breakfast consisted of rice, lettuce salad, an ice cream scoop of cold scrambled eggs (topped with ketchup), as well as some soggy bacon. We tried to think of many people that we knew of back home who typically ate such things for breakfast, but ended up drawing a blank. Ken, the student who ran track, eventually emerged from the depths of the hostel to join us at breakfast. Strangely, after sitting with us for 20 minutes or so, he had still not been waited on. At that time in the morning, there was only one other occupied table in the whole restaurant, which housed a group of Japanese businessmen. While I could see that the waitress was busy with this table, it appeared that she didn’t even look our direction the whole time Ken was with us. It may have been a simple mistake, and my imagination might have been getting the better of me, but after the previous day’s talk about being gaijin, the thought crossed my mind that serving a number of Japanese men in suits would always take precedent over a table of foreigners. Whatever the case, Ken eventually stood by the cash register long enough to be noticed and to place his order.

By 10, it was time for the students to head off to their second round of home-stay experience, this time staying with families of high school students from Toyo High School, where Don knew the principal. Christie stayed behind once again and had but one major goal in mind- to visit Disneyland and Disney Sea. While neither of these locations had been near the top of my list of things to see in Japan, I agreed to take her there, knowing that her chances of successfully navigating Tokyo’s labyrinth of public transportation alone were pretty slim. Kristin also decided that she would accompany us. Before going to see Mickey and the gang, we decided to drop our luggage off at the hotel that we would be staying in for the next two nights, the Hilton Tokyo Hotel in Shinjuku. This area of town, while also filled with crowds and neon, had a much more business-like air to it than Shibuya, more akin to Chicago’s Loop than to Times Square. A Yasaka van took us to our hotel where we were able to drop off our luggage, although it was still too early to check into our rooms. The desk clerk also provided us with detailed instructions of how to get to the Disney theme parks, which was about an hour’s subway and train ride away and involved changing our mode of transport in some of the busiest stations in Tokyo.

Despite the challenges afforded by the Tokyo public transit system, we arrived at Disney by noon and soon had to choose what park we would visit. Since Disneyland was reportedly almost a carbon-copy of the one in California, my vote was for Disney Sea, something that existed only in Japan. Christie didn’t care one way or another, since she planned to return on the following day to whatever park we didn’t visit, this time on her own. This decided, we hopped on the monorail which left from the train station and looped out around Disneyland to get to Disney Sea. This latter park was built around a network of man-made lakes and reportedly based around Disney films which had to do with bodies of water. In some cases, the connection with the Sea was obvious, in others it was a bit of a stretch. In the former category was the Little Mermaid, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, as well as a re-creation of Sinbad’s seven voyages; in the latter category was Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull (along the Amazon), Aladdin (part of the “Arabian Coast”), and Journey to the Center of the Earth (they discover an underground sea?).

The centerpiece of the entryway to Disney Sea was a huge spinning globe with water flowing over it, making the oceans seem alive. Looking at it, I was reminded just how much of the Earth is made up of water. The 13+ hour flight from Chicago had also reinforced this notion, since most of that time was spend over the Pacific Ocean. While the weather was nothing like the bitter cold January temperatures that they were no doubt experiencing back home, it was a rather cool and damp weekday in Tokyo and the park was nearly deserted. On hand to greet us were two chipmunks, named Chipu and Dalu, as their names were pronounced in Japanese. We also encountered a small marching band as we made our way to the central body of water, the Mediterranean Harbor. I could see that about half the band was made up of gaijin, and imagined that the Disney theme parks in Japan must represent a major source of jobs for foreigners.

After we had ridden gondolas around the Mediterranean, I used the restroom and immediately noticed a few modern conveniences that were frequently lacking in Japan: hot water and heated hand dryers. My hands were freezing after I had washed them in cold water and blown them dry with equally cold air. Our subsequent touring of the decks on an actual ocean liner that was docked nearby didn’t help this feeling at all, as the boat was docked adjacent to Tokyo Bay itself and the cold breeze coming off the Bay almost rivaled that from the hand dryers. I did take my hands out of my pockets, however, just long enough to lean out over the bow as I imitated a pose from the movie “Titanic”. Since it was nearly 1:30 pm by that time, we continued on to “Cap Cod” and ate lunch at a restaurant which specialized in warm soups and hot sandwiches.

The next attraction that we experienced was “Aquatopia”, a bumper car ride consisting of round “boats” that were drawn along an underwater track, bumping into each other and narrowly missing other obstacles. The ride made me a little queasy, since the boats would spin before changing direction following a bump or near collision, something that does not typically agree with me on rides. Having just eaten lunch before boarding the ride could not have helped, either. It was probably unwise of me, therefore, to venture on to the next ride, “StormRider”, a virtual trip on a weather balloon. After entering a “storm” on our quest to set off a virtual Storm Diffusion Device, I felt positively nauseous, due to large screen depiction of flying as well as the simulated bumpy ride.

At our next stop, we were a bit disappointed to learn that the Indiana Jones ride was not running for the day, but were able spent some time looking around the Incan ruins which surrounded it, nonetheless. I posed for pictures in front of the full-sized pyramid, while Kristin lay across a stone altar, pretending to be a human sacrifice. There was even a simulated archeological dig, complete with bones and pottery. Occasionally, a man in a monkey suit could be seen running around the area which included the dig. The one ride that was running in the area was the “Raging Spirits” rollercoaster, which I braved, despite the fact that I was still feeling slightly sick, since I tended to do better on roller coasters than on spinning rides. It was so much fun that Christie insisted on going on it a second time, this time filming the entire ride, despite the fact that we were warned not to bring cameras or video recorders on the ride with us. She hid her recorder underneath her jacket until we were on the ride, then held it in front of her as we rode the coaster, which included a series of 360-degree loops. We paused to watch her video afterwards- which did end up being quite good.

In “Arabia”, we took a tour of Sinbad’s journeys in a ride which reminded me “It’s a Small World” at Disneyland. Emboldened by Christie’s clandestine video recording of the previous ride, I pulled out my camera and took some pictures of Sinbad going about his adventures, even though taking photos had been strictly forbidden. After that, we took turns posing on a plastic camel or in front of a full-sized model of our own shop at the bazaar. We ended our time in the Middle East by watching a show featuring Aladdin, which combined live action acting with 3D animation. By this time we had encircled the entire park, leaving only the centerpiece giant volcano for us to explore, which had continued to belch steam as well as undergo periodic “eruptions” in which it spouted flame into the air during our visit to the park.

Before we entered the volcano proper, however, we visited the “Mermaid Lagoon” which was nestled alongside this impressive landmark. In the Lagoon, we rode some “kiddy rides” while we waited for the next live show to begin and then watched as Ariel and friends frolicked “Under the Sea” in a musical rendition which combined acrobatics with a traditional Japanese puppetry called bunraku. The volcano itself contained the “Journey to the Center of the Earth” ride, as well as “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, which we both rode, respectively. Being a scientist, I was surprised to learn that both the depths of the earth and sea appeared to contain significant populations of fanciful beings as well as terrifying monsters. In all, it was quite an eye opening experience!

We finished touring through the volcano at 6 pm, just in time to head to “New York” to grab a bite to eat at a deli there and still catch the 6:20 closing extravaganza on the central lake. “BraviSEAmo”, as it was called, was uniquely Japanese in character, which, like the puppet show, appeared to be one of the few vestiges of native culture that had survived “Disneyfication”. Although I couldn’t understand the Japanese that accompanied the dramatic music, I was able to piece together enough of the story to get the basic idea, although most of the details still eluded me. First, a “water spirit” appeared in the form of a boat ridden by whom other than Mickey Mouse himself! Mickey, for some reason, appeared to be wearing Polynesian garb, complete with a feathered headdress. The boat reminded me of a fireboat as it continuously shot water high into the air. Speaking of fire, the surface of the lake suddenly caught fire and a metal “fire spirit” in the form of a monster that would not have out of place battling Godzilla, soon rose from the flames. This spirit spewed liberal amounts of fire, of course, an activity that was then alternated with Mickey’s boat shooting water, for what seemed like a very long time. Eventually, the spirits came to some sort of truce and the music which accompanied the fire spirit didn’t seem evil or angry anymore. In my opinion, he, like every other good Japanese citizen, had found his place in society and decided to contribute to it in a positive way from that point on.

We left Disney Sea just before closing time and headed back to our hotel in Shinjuku, where I was sharing a room with Don. After I had told him about our busy day, we turned in for the night.

The time had come to bid farewell to Kyoto. I ate breakfast once again at the top of the hotel for one last glimpse at the city before heading to Tokyo for the rest of the week. Mitch met the group at the train station in order to see us off. He and the students had developed their own “secret” handshake, which he taught me while we waited for our train. It was clear that, although I had known Mitch for only one week, we were going to be close friends. The three hour trip to Tokyo went off without a hitch, by this time I was starting to grow accustomed to traveling on the shinkansen. This time, however, the train took us through the snow covered mountains east of Kyoto, instead of our normal path southwest towards Osaka. As a Japanese woman passed by pushing a cart full of goodies for purchase, I couldn’t help but picture the Hogwarts Express as it headed towards the famed school of witchcraft and wizardry hidden deep in the surrounding mountains.

As we neared the expansive Tokyo metropolitan area, I was pleasantly surprised to catch a glimpse of the elusive Mount Fuji, which is often shrouded in clouds. After that, the tracks briefly followed alongside the ocean, which was also a spectacular site. Around 11 am, we finally pulled into Tokyo Station. Although we had said our goodbyes to Mitch, even in Tokyo we remained the recipients of his family’s hospitality: a Yasaka tour bus, complete with a diminutive female tour guide dressed in an official-looking uniform, picked us up at the train station to take us to a meeting with the Goldman Sachs company in the swank business district of Roppongi Hills, an event mainly geared toward the business students on the trip. On the way there, we drove past the expansive grounds of the Imperial Palace, as well as by Tokyo Tower, which had been modeled after the Eiffel Tower.

We were soon dropped off in parking garage of the Mori Tower, home to Goldman Sachs. Since we still had about an hour until our 1 pm meeting, we were free to explore the nearby mall and to find something to eat for lunch. Looking around, it became immediately apparent to me that the prices of food in this area of Tokyo were much higher than in the other parts of Japan that we had visited already. As I was not too keen on paying an exorbitant amount of money for a lunch there, I finally settled on a restaurant which served gyoza to tide me over for a while. The way that one ordered the food was a new experience for me. I picked out what I wanted from the pictures on a vending machine, fed my money in, and received a ticket, which I then turned in a the counter. I soon received my food, along with a green tea, from the restaurant’s wait staff. Once I had eaten, I made my way back to Mori Tower.

Most of the rest of the faculty and students had already made their way to the meeting by the time I walked through the doors which led to the offices of Goldman Sachs. Maybe it was the casual air that I had about me, or perhaps the ever-present camera hung about my neck, but as soon as I entered the lobby I was singled out by the security guard who stood there and soundlessly directed to a sign that was posted just inside the doors. The sign essentially said that Goldman Sachs property was restricted to people actually doing business with the company. “I’m going to the boardroom”, I said, in Japanese, and brushed past the guard as I marched up to the reception desk. “I’m with Monmouth College”, I told the girl behind the counter, showing her the nametag that Mitch had provided for us upon our arrival and which described my position as a “distinguished professor” with the college. Soon, I was on my way up to the 53rd floor boardroom, one story short of the top floor.

The table in the boardroom was huge, easily accommodating our group of 21. The views out the windows were even better, offering views of the massive city which surrounded us. The meeting centered on an ex-pat who had worked for the company for a number of years and who shared with us his experiences of living in Japan. I was relieved to be listening to his enthralling stories than to be learning about the inner-workings of an investment company. One thing that stuck out the most to me was his descriptions of going places with his Japanese-American wife, who spoke little or no Japanese herself. In almost every restaurant that they would visit, the waiter would address her only, who then had to turn to her husband for a translation. Our speaker would then convey her wishes in his fluent Japanese to the waiter, who would continue to address only the wife, despite her inability to understand. The ex-pat stressed that no matter how well you knew the language, a visitor to Japan would always be a gaijin, a “foreign person”, and would never be fully integrated into Japanese society, despite their best efforts.

Following the meeting, we once again boarded the bus, which took us to the Yoyogi Olympic Youth Hostel, where we would be spending the night. Yoyogi was the name of a huge park in Tokyo, roughly equivalent to Central Park in New York. During the 1964 Olympics, a nearby area had been developed in which to play the games, along with providing housing for the athletes. The Olympic village had since been converted to relatively low cost housing which catered predominantly to backpackers. We arrived at the hostel around 4 pm and I had soon deposited my belongings in my tiny 6 by 10 foot room. Despite the small size of the room, it was quite cozy, with an even smaller private bathroom, as well as a stunning view of the Olympic village, the surrounding park, as well as the outlying cityscape. The view from the hostel’s restaurant, perched at the very top of the building, was even better. Like many Japanese restaurants, it had plastic models of the food that they were serving that evening in a display case near the door. Since I was not completely immune to the desire to have familiar food in unfamiliar surroundings- I chose the pizza over the local cuisine that was on display. My dinner ended up being good, even though the “pepperoni” topping ended up better resembling sliced hot dogs.

After dinner, most of the students were headed back to the Roppongi area to search out the Hard Rock Café, in addition to various other drinking establishments. The faculty, however, had other plans, as Don had offered to show Kristin and me how to get to the Time Square-esq neighborhood of Shibuya, although he already arranged to meet a friend later in the evening and couldn’t stay for long. The three of us walked to the nearest bus stop and boarded a bus bound for Shibuya, arriving there about 7:30 pm. Although it was a Thursday evening, that didn’t seem to faze the throngs of people who crowded the famed shopping and entertainment district. Having lived in New York, I had been to Times Square a number of times, but it had never seemed as big, as crowded, or even as bright as Shibuya. Don told us that the easiest way back to the hostel was probably via JR train, using our passes, instead of by bus, which could be confusing. He then showed us around what was reported to be the busiest intersection in all of Japan. We then took in the array of shops that were located in the vicinity, also keeping an eye on the interesting people in our midst. Among teenagers, the 80s seemed to be back in full force in Japan, as many of them spouted the big iconic hairdos. Although it was January, most of the girls were wearing ridiculously short skirts, often accompanied by black pantyhose, fishnet or otherwise.

A number of the teenagers were congregating inside an arcade from which liberal amounts of noise and light were emanating, so we ventured inside. Just inside the door were large drums that were being pounded in rhythm according to instructions on a video monitor, along with various bins which contained prizes that could potentially be extracted using a mechanical claw. Kristin was immediately drawn to the purikura machines, Japanese photo machines that produced sheets of stickers. She then went through the process of getting her picture taken in a booth and choosing a variety of pictures and sayings to add to her image for inclusion on the stickers. We had to ask for help from the arcade staff, however, since all of the instructions on the machine were in Japanese. Having produced a few sheets of stickers that would be the envy of any Japanese schoolgirl, we headed back out into the crowded streets.

The next stop was by my request. As we passed the Apple Computer store, I decided to stop in and check my email, as well as check on any electronic gadgets which were featured in Japan but perhaps not in the U.S. A live band happened to playing in the back of the store, so it was quite crowded, but most people were paying more attention to the band than to the computers at that moment. At this point, Don excused himself so that he could meet his friend, and soon disappeared into the busy streets of Shibuya. After I had accomplished my technological goals, Kristin and I listened to the band for a while and then headed out once again. Since, by this time, my personal sized hotdog pizza was beginning to wear off, we decided to stop by TGIF for a snack. This was just one of a number of Western chain restaurants that could be found in Tokyo. Our table overlooked the busy streets below, and we continued to people watch while we ate. Around 10 pm, we decided that it was finally time to head back to the hostel- although the crowds still showed no signs of abating.

We took the train, as planned, to the fashionable shopping district of Harajuku. If Shibuya was comparable to NYC’s Times Square, Harajuku was Japan’s answer to L.A.’s Rodeo Drive. Unlike Shibuya, however, the stores in Harajuku had long closed and the area was practically deserted. I had a good sense that the youth hostel lay around the corner to the right, so we rounded the bend, passing underneath a pedestrian bridge and also passing an entrance which led into Yoyogi Park itself. When we came to an intersection, I tried to remember in which direction we had to turn, as we had not brought any map along with us. Taking a left brought us by the huge stadium complexes which had been used in the Olympics, something I viewed as a positive sign that we were nearing the old Olympic Village. However, after 30 minutes of encircling the grounds, we ended up back at the pedestrian bridge in Harajuku.

I was now convinced that we should have turned right at the first intersection, not left, so we headed back in that direction once again. As we passed the entrance to the park a second time, part of me wanted to cut through it, since I now expected that the hostel was on the opposite side of the park from us. I was a little leery, however, of crossing a city park in the middle of the night. After all- who in their right mind would wander across Central Park after 11 pm? We therefore passed the entrance once again, which I later discovered led to the Meiji Shine, the most famous Shinto Shrine in Tokyo, and then through the rest of the park, leading out of it directly adjacent to the Olympic Village. In reality, it would have probably been perfectly fine to take such a shortcut in Tokyo. Since violent crime was virtually non-existent in Japan, I had experienced little fear so far of wandering around its largest city’s deserted neighborhoods. As it was, we turned right at the intersection in question and arrived at the hostel after another 30 minute hike. By that point, I was overjoyed to see my tiny room once again.