Closed on Weekends

Dearest Rachel –

For all that we found ourselves standing in line for several hours at Haneda Airport, waiting to be cleared through customs and collect our bags, we should have known that it wouldn’t have mattered how long we took to get through. When you arrive in a city at five in the morning – even a world-class city such as Tokyo, which you might expect to be one that ‘never sleeps,’ like so many on our side of the pond pride themselves on being – there isn’t going to be all that much to do at first. If nothing else, by the time we showed up at the hotel (at eight o’clock in the morning), it was made clear to us that we would not be able to check in for at least six hours.

Even our tour documentation let us know we were at liberty for the day; they weren’t expecting us to want to hit the ground running, after a total of fifteen hours in the air (and half again as many waiting around in one airport or another). They clearly assumed that we would be tired and wanting to catch up on our rest for this first day in Japan.

It’s a fair assumption, sure, but to be quite honest, we would prefer to be doing our resting in an actual hotel room, rather than sitting around in a hotel lobby, no matter how fancy it was (and believe you me, this place absolutely owns the title of fancy. According to our cab driver, this is where foreign dignitaries are put up when visiting the prime minister or the Diet – it doesn’t hurt that it’s within walking distance of the PM’s residence, not that any such high-and-mighty would deign to do something as literally pedestrian as walking that far).

But there’s only so much sitting around I could bear, at least without being able to stretch out and fall asleep on a bed. We’re in a city Daniel’s never been in, one I haven’t been to in over thirty years, and a part of town I’m fairly certain we never saw back then at any rate. Footsore or not, I need to get up and wander around, and see what there is to see. And indeed, there seems to be plenty to see without even so much as leaving the hotel. Rather than a simple gift shop, there are corridors that extend from the lobby into a virtual mall. Except…

What the heck is going on? More to the point, why isn’t there anything going on?

We never actually get an answer to that question, but it turns out to be perfectly fine, as I find something that is open at this hour on Saturday. And Sunday, for that matter – not that we’re likely to be there tomorrow. It turns out that, in the middle of the hotel campus, there’s an entire Japanese garden, complete with a building said to be the largest Christian chapel in Tokyo (which admittedly isn’t saying much, but that it exists at all – in the backyard, so to speak, of a hotel, no less – is more than impressive enough for me)

Amidst the garden were signs indicating where to go to find things, such as the chapel building and the waterfall. One series of signs pointed the way to Akasaka, and we decided to follow it (well, I decided, and Daniel didn’t object)

Really, quite a lot to take in for our first morning here, especially without any official guidance; I think I’ve earned the right to get back to the hotel and put my (aching) feet up again.

Talk to you later; until then, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.