My Life As I See It: April 2017

Well here I am. In Tokyo. We've been here for four days. I’m not sure where to begin, but I will say, just briefly…Dhaka didn’t end well. I’ll leave that for another time, but there was heartache and loss and…a lot to include the death of our beloved Chumleigh and yet, we survived it all and now a new adventure begins. I know…I haven’t even gotten around to home leave yet, but that also, will have to wait just a bit longer, because here we are in beautiful Tokyo and I’m ready to get started!

For starters, Tokyo is astonishingly clean. I get that comparing it to Dhaka is probably a little pointless, but…well…I kind of have to! Dhaka is wild and dirty and broken. It’s colorful and noisy and chaotic and oh so….well sort of all jumbled up. Tokyo is the antithesis of all of that. Our first impressions were of an immaculate airport with an orderly system for processing through immigration. I can’t decide whether I’m impressed or a little saddened that there was not a single cat wandering around the airport.

We were greeted by our sponsor Steve at the airport and he whisked us off to an embassy van which was oddly devoid of armor as apparently, no body tries to blow you up in Tokyo!

As we pulled out into traffic, I had to notice that there were no rickshaws anywhere; no tuk tuk’s either, and not a single goat wandering on the road.

As we had prepared for landing, our pilot had announced that the weather in Tokyo was partly cloudy with a light mist. He lied. As we entered the freeway, rain pelted the car from all sides and the clouds threatened to come right down and squish us onto the road. Still…even in the gloom it was clear that we had made it just in time for the cherry blossoms so I was content. They were everywhere and as impressive as anticipated.

Steve looked at us perplexed and said “I don’t understand. It’s never rainy this time of year. Yesterday was beautiful”. Derek and I exchanged a knowing glance. Steve didn’t know us yet, so wouldn’t realize that the weather was doubtless there just for us. A subtle challenge from Japan as if the country were saying, “I’ve heard of you before, don’t mess with me!” We have a history of bringing catastrophe wherever we go. A coincidence you think, that Bangladesh had never been bothered by ISIS until just after we arrived?? That’s what they thought when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines after 700 hundred years while were there, but we knew better.

We drove straight to the embassy housing compound. It’s pretty incredible. While the apartments are small, they are large by Japanese standards and as soon as I figure out where to put 7,000 lbs of household goods in a 1,500 sq. ft. apartment, everything will be fine; besides, it’s hard to complain too much when your living in a complex with a pool, tennis courts, racquetball courts, a gym, game room, community hall, a gymnasium with yoga, exercise and martial arts classes, and stunningly landscaped grounds with koi ponds. Oh, did I mention the shopette and salon? Who needs to sit in the apartment?

So there we are, settled into our little apartment and reality hits. We have no transportation. Our feet are now our vehicle and after a year and a half on lockdown in Dhaka…they’re pretty much a klunker. Fortunately, the embassy is only about a 10-15 minute walk from the compound, but oddly enough, it seems to be uphill both ways. There are remarkably efficient subways but it’s a fifteen minute walk to get to them as well. We have a vehicle being shipped to us from Dhaka, but frankly there’s no place to park so we might as well just keep walking.

Yesterday we decided that we needed to learn the subway system. We’ve utilized subways in many cities around the world, but can I just say that the Tokyo subway is the Godzilla of all subways? Take all the subway maps from all the subways in the world, squish them all together, and you will have the Tokyo subway. It’s massive. No really. It’s huge.

We found Sailor Moon!

Doors in front of the tracks so no one can fall, jump or get pushed on the the tracks.

Cleanest subway I've ever

So, being the intrepid adventures that we are, we heading to the underground. Steve came to our rescue yet again and gave us two pasmo cards. It’s a loadable card that you can use on all of the systems. Otherwise you’d be buying tickets every few minutes. The first step was to find the subway. It’s not as easy as it sounds! First off of course, it’s all underground and awfully well hidden at that. Lucky for us, we found a Tokyo subway map and route planner and soon we were on our way. It put something of a damper on our adventurous enthusiasm when we notice that everything here seems to be written in a different language. It’s like they have a different word for everything!

Alright, in fairness, we did discover that amidst the sea of lovely but indecipherable Kanji symbols, there were English names for stations and stops.

We finally found our station. I looked around at all of the passengers in dismay. What is the deal with Tokyo??? Everyone in the station looked like that they were there for a Vogue photo shoot! Seriously! The women are gorgeous. Men and women alike were perfectly dressed and coifed. Everyone in the station was dressed in subtle shades of black, grey and tan. I just came from Bangladesh for heavens sake! I dress like a crazed peacock! I vowed to go home and burn anything and the primary color spectrum.

Fashion trauma aside, Derek and I stood studying the subway app, comparing it to the English bits on the signs. A voice came on over the loud speaker and spoke quickly in Japanese. According to google translation I’m fairly sure he something like “Go away you pathetic Americans. You are too stupid and poorly dressed to be here”. Or something like that.

Anyway, in the end thanks to Derek we did find our train and more importantly we found a beautiful Hamarikyu Gardens. We even had cherry blossom iced choux with real cherry blossoms.

So, my first impressions of Japan? The people are incredibly polite. The shopping is insanely amazing. Derek is going to starve if he has to eat Sushi, everything is clean and beautiful and there is more to see than we will every manage, but we are going to try our hardest. This is going to be an awesome post!