Dearest Rachel –
After getting back to the hotel last night (for the second time around; Daniel actually fell asleep almost as soon as we made it back from Harajuku, but after an hour’s worth of editing and writing, I felt the need to wake him up so we could at least get some small amount of dinner – which I mentioned in yesterday’s letter), we got a better night’s sleep than the one before, but dozing from nine until three is still both a little short and a little out of sync with the city. On the other hand, waking up that early has its advantages; we could get a few of our usual divertissements out of the way before we had to get everything packed and ready for our transfer to Nagano.
Yes, today is the day we pack up and leave Tokyo for a while. We’ll be coming back eventually (as well as staying for a few days after the tour group breaks up – and apparently, we’re not alone in doing so, as it happens), but for now, we’re up to the mountains to see the snow monkeys, the apples and the hot springs; at least, that’s what I’ve been told to expect from there.
This is one destination we would never be able to reach via our typical mode of vacation transit. For all that I appreciate being able to unpack one time and let the floating hotel do the traveling for me, it does have a disadvantage in that certain places are inaccessible by ship; mountain towns and cities, to give just one example, are out of the question to visit. Even mid-continental cities such as our own would be impossible to visit, with those geographical limitations. Then, of course, there’s the fact that we generally only have a few hours in any one locale; enough to get a slight taste (literally, in certain cases) of any one place, but not so much as to give some of them the deep dive some of them deserve. Granted, there have been ports that I barely wanted to bother with (Hanpantota) and others where I would prefer to focus on the ship itself as the destination, but as a rule, I’d prefer to spend a little more time in a lot of the places I’ve been to, even if most of the extra time is spent doing stuff that the locals would consider ‘ordinary’ or ‘mundane.’
This is why I’ve been dreaming for the past few years of wandering through Japan on a JR Pass, staying for a couple days at one city or another before hopping the Shinkansen to the next destination. For all intents and purposes, this particular trip is essentially serving as a dry run before trying to do this on my (or rather, ‘our,’ assuming I count Daniel – or, God willing, Megumi – in on this) own. But honestly, I’m starting to wonder if this ‘dream’ trip is really feasible, given our temperament and what we’re accustomed to. It’s nice to have a ‘home’ away from home to come back to; to be drifting from day to day, carrying all our possessions with us as we do so, feels rather daunting after having done so for only a day – and only our backpacks, as we’ve left our suitcases for the hotel to forward to our assigned bullet train.
As you might guess, I’m writing most of this from the station as we’re waiting for our train to show up – we’re actually here over two hours ahead of time, even though that’s actually quite excessive for such a trip (they don’t have nearly the same TSA-type issues as we do in the States with airports). Part of that has to do with the fact that it’s raining outside, and not nearly so pleasant to wander around the Yanaka neighborhood as it might have been otherwise; we were originally given a couple of hours to shop and grab lunch, but we all agreed that an hour or so would be more than sufficient for us, and we’d rather make our way to the station and chill out under a roof rather than out of doors (that, and there are very few places to sit down and enjoy a meal, or even a snack).
We did try, though… and aside from being wet, chilly and unable to find a seat, it wasn’t all that bad:
But as I said, we’d had enough sooner than originally planned, especially since we had a reservation for a 3:30 departure time on the Shinkansen, and it wasn’t even one o’clock. To be sure, we had to ride a couple of stops over from Nittori to Uedo Station, but that didn’t take long. Most of the rest of the tour group decided to head to the surface to check out Uedo Park (there was some talk about cherry blossoms having come into flower there – and we had seen at least one tree in Yanaka with bright pink leaves having budded, so despite the fact that it was early for Sakura season, the rumor was at least plausible), but we had no desire to deal with that much more of the cold and damp. Not only that, but Daniel and I had both been recovering from yesterday’s footsoreness, and didn’t feel like pushing ourselves that much further.
However, after the better part of the first hour, curiosity got the better of me, and I went to wander around a bit of the station complex. Eventually, I had to get Daniel and bring him around to investigate; I didn’t want to leave him behind for all that time wondering what had become of me. I won’t say that we scoured the place from top to bottom, but we covered a lot more ground than even I expected to, even discovering a possible alternate route back to Narita when we need to depart next week.
Eventually, of course, sufficient time passed for everyone to reassemble at the gate (particularly our guide, who walked us through the process of checking through the turnstile, as the Suica cards could be used as payment for our tickets, but as they had already been paid for as part of the tour itself, they shouldn’t be), and we got our assignments for our seats on the train. And for all that we sat around waiting for it, once we were aboard the train, it was waiting for no one; it took off while I was still wriggling my way out of my jacket.
But at least the sooner we got started, the sooner we would be in Nagano, getting used to our new digs, checking out the local cuisine, and trying to get a decent night’s rest before visiting the Zenko-ji Temple tomorrow – for which I need to ask you as always to keep an eye on us, honey, and wish us luck, as we’re going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 