Dearest Rachel –
I didn’t get anywhere near the amount of sleep that I should have last night, honey. After cashing in a little after ten, I thought I’d gotten myself a decent night’s rest, only to wake up a little after midnight, needing to use the bathroom. I managed to drift off yet again… eventually… but only for another couple of hours, as I again felt the need to use the washroom, this time somewhat after two. This time, however, Daniel was in there, drawing himself a bath (a little early for a Monday, but understandable, as neither of us had attended to this sort of thing since arriving from O’Hare).
The hotel had provided us with slippers to pad around in, and rather than disturb Daniel, I decided to put them on and head downstairs to use the hotel’s public facilities. And here is where I got a rather unpleasant shock.
At some point, I prevailed upon Daniel to let me in to the bathroom (at which point, he closed the shower curtain so that neither of us could see each other – I think that the both of us may still have issues with our upcoming visit to the sentou in Nagano), so that I could at least try to go back to sleep with an empty bladder. And ‘try’ was definitely the operating word; while I was that much more comfortable thanks to Daniel’s cooperation, for some reason, I just couldn’t fall back asleep.
The good news was that I eventually could get up, shower, and get dressed with plenty of time to join the part of the group that was headed out to the Tsukiji Fish Market as an unofficial – and thereby optional – excursion. The bad news was that I was starting the day already running on fumes – but what else could I do? When you’re in with a group, things will happen at certain times on certain days, and you have to either go – whether ready or not – or not.
Ironically, Daniel was every bit as ready as I was, having fallen asleep earlier than I had last night (he was sound asleep even as I was finishing editing Sunday’s activity and uploading the videos to my channel). But of course, he wasn’t about to do that, because, well… fish market. So whether I was going to be able to make it through the day on such limited rest or not, I was going to be the only one of us heading out that early in the morning; which meant that it was all the more incumbent upon me to take what footage I could, for his sake as well as anyone else who might be watching this over your shoulder.
From here, we were to head to Akasuka with the entire tour group for a demonstration of the tea ceremony, which was a resumption of our official itinerary. I was of the understanding that we would collect the others back at the hotel and then make our way over there, so you can imagine my surprise – and concern, since I wasn’t sure about Daniel’s being able to make his way on his own recognizance – when Jack announced that we would be walking (well, for the most part – there was a point where we did board a subway for the last six or seven stops after we crossed the river) to Akasuka and meeting the others there. So we were going to be on our separate ways for that much longer yet.
At the same time, I took a few pictures and some interesting footage that I wouldn’t have been able to see had we gone back the way we had come, so there’s that. That, and it would have taken that much longer for us to collect them, rather than leave it to our tour guide to do so.
Which she did, although we managed to beat her and the others to the experience venue. Moreover, it turned out I was right to be a little concerned about Daniel’s ability to make it without incident; despite her presenting them to us the night before, and my placing his next to his breakfast meal ticket so he wouldn’t miss it, he apparently left his prepaid Suica card, which would allow him to use the metro system with much greater ease than when we first got here, behind in the room. Jack lent him a separate card, which we need to get back to him come morning. And I still don’t know how he managed to get breakfast without a meal ticket. Maybe he just cuts such a distinctive figure that the hotel recognized him as a guest from the morning before; for my part I’d rather that they’d required him to fetch it, as that might have sorted two problems at once before they became such.
Still, we had managed to all get together for the ceremony…
As for the tea preparation we were allowed to perform after the tea master (mistress?) demonstrated the process, I was proud of my efforts at first, until she came by and whisked it up that much more vigorously, until there was a froth covering the surface of the tea. In my defense, I was probably too afraid to spill the tea by doing just that, but maybe that’s part of the art.
From there, we made our way to the main strip of Akasuka, extending from the Thunder Gate to the Senso-ji. Since we’ve been here a couple of times, and Daniel wants little to do with the shrines themselves, we spent most of the couple of hours we were given going down each of the various offshooting paths, each filled with a host of various stores and restaurants.
Once we all regrouped (we did see a group of our fellows queuing up outside of an udon shop not far from Senso-ji earlier on, but since the two of us don’t customarily do lunch, we settled on a handful of small taiyaki as a snack), we made our way to the Yamanote line for Harajuku, the fashion capital of Tokyo (and thus, Japan). True, as you’d probably guess, we don’t have any particular interest in fashion as such, but it might have been an interesting place to visit.
But that’s not where we found ourselves upon disembarking. Instead, the station opened up to an entry of Meiji Park, the wooded area surrounding the shrine to Emperor Meiji set up in the middle of Tokyo, an island of tranquility in the middle of one of the biggest and busiest cities in the world. All of which is an impressive thing in and of itself, but once again, since Daniel and I have been here before – and he has an aversion to shrines in general – it’s hard for us to generate a lot of enthusiasm.
I was also running on fumes at this point, and was uncomfortably cold. So after we did our quick circuit through the place, we informed Miho-san that the two of us would once again be going our separate ways; rather than wandering through Harajuku with the others, we were going to hop onto the Yamanote and head back to Ikebukuro and our hotel directly. She acknowledged our departure, and thanked us for waiting for the rest of the group to catch up so as to inform here, and we were off, arriving back at around five in the afternoon; a good time to catch a quick dinner (side note: the yakiniku burger at MOS is like a small handheld beefbowl, except it falls apart too easily to properly count as ‘handheld’) and head off to bed.
I really hope we can get enough sleep so as to have enough energy for tomorrow, though. And to that end, honey, I hope you can keep an eye on us, and wish us luck, because we’re going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 