Second Second Home

Dearest Rachel –

It doesn’t always apply, of course – there are times when it’s just needed as a place to sleep, and others when it’s a fancy treat (in more ways than one) that simply couldn’t be provided in real life – but as a general rule, a hotel room is meant to be comfortable enough to make the customer feel like they’re at a second home. If nothing else, he’s supposed to be sufficiently comfortable as to fall asleep at your establishment; to fail that is to fail in the business as a whole.

If that’s true, they I would guess that the Metropolitan Hotel chain has proven to be a bit of a success. While I’ve yet to be able to get in a solid eight-hour night of sleep in Tokyo (although that may be due more to time differentials and wanting to both get downstairs early enough to linger over breakfast and allow Daniel time to listen to his usual broadcasts), I can say that, when we’ve been out and about, I’ve slipped and referred to our hotel room as ‘home’ from time to time. Which, while feeling like a faux pas in the moment to me, would likely be taken as a compliment by hotel itself.

My point being, the bar has been set at a rather high level when it comes to making us feel ‘at home’ by our accommodations in Ikebukuro. And while I certainly wouldn’t claim to be dreading our relocation (although I was mildly concerned about how our suitcases would make it to where we were going when we would be just leaving them at the front desk to explore Tokyo for one more half day before boarding the Shinkansen directly), I was aware that outside of the world-class city that is Tokyo, things might be a little… how do I put this? More Japanese and less cosmopolitan and global. Which one might think would be a good thing, except that, given my limited acquaintance with the language and customs, might make it considerably harder to function with the same level of comfort as in our ‘second home’ in Tokyo.

However, as we stepped quickly off of our train (because Nagano is just a stop along the way; our particular route doesn’t conclude until somewhere in either Akita or Aomori prefecture, far to the north, and they are on a tight schedule), we received a couple of pleasant surprises, which offset the mild shock of the cold weather up here (not that we weren’t expecting it as much as it was just a shock to step into from the warmth of the train). The first was that our hotel was connected directly to the station, so we would be protected from the rain as we made our way to it from the platform. The second was that it, too, was a Metropolitan hotel, so we could expect a similar experience here as in Tokyo, to a certain extent.

This is somewhat important, as I had wondered whether the place out in the relative hinterlands wouldn’t be more like a traditional ryokan, with tatami mats and futons or some such. Yes, it would probably have been a more authentic experience, but there is the question of whether we would be prepared for such accommodations; if nothing else, such a place might not be amenable to folks as tethered to the internet as we are (and you would agree with me, I’m sure). But no, I needn’t have worried, as the place is equipped with many of the same amenities as one would expect of a more modern hotel anywhere else in the world. It may subtract from the whole experience due to its homogeneity, but some things were just as happy to have provided for us despite that.

Now that’s not to say that settling in was without its hiccups. I wouldn’t just be writing to you about a hotel stay if everything went ‘normally’; that would literally be nothing to write home about. I hadn’t anticipated, for example, that the outlets here would only be of the two-prong variety. This wouldn’t pose a problem with our phones, as we’d brought chargers that only required such plugs. However, our computers would be another story entirely, as they require a grounded, three-prong outlet – and there were none to be found in the room.

No worries, though, I thought; I would ask the front desk about where I could go to purchase a three-pronged adapter. I even called up the question on a translation app, because I figured it was a strange enough request that I wouldn’t be able to make the question understandable just by asking directly – the staff at the front desk are reasonably fluent in English, but I expected this would be an unusual request to the point of being incomprehensible.

But no – although, rather than offering me directions to a nearby hardware or do-it-yourself store, the clerk reached under the counter and brought out a universal adapter for me to borrow, with the stipulation that I return it to them upon check-out. Wonderful. Although, it turned out that this wasn’t the solution I hoped for either, as the two main prongs were circular rather than flat, forcing me to return it almost immediately.

The next little adventure involved me going down to the shops between the hotel and the station. I’ve been concerned that I (well, we, but I’m not about to push Daniel into this if I’m not willing to do so myself) haven’t been socializing much with the other members of our tour group, so I went to hang out with a group of them at a bar amidst the shops.

I’m going to say that one of our number reminds me of your description of your first impression of me, and leave it at that. It’s possible that this could change, but there’s not that many days left to our trip for that opinion to change, like that of yours regarding me. That, and he’s older than I was back then, for whatever that might be worth. For the time being, I need to maintain a certain level of reserve around him, as there’s only enough room for one opinionated person in any group, in order to maintain harmony.

That having been said, he and several others were headed out on the town for dinner, but I had plans on getting some of what I understood to be a local street or comfort food, a dumpling called an oyaki. And as it so happened, there were several places in the shopping arcade that offered them… except…

All in all, despite these little touches of chaos, we managed to have a nice, comfortable evening in our second ‘second home’ – and without even going outside after coming in from the train platform. I don’t know what you would have thought of our staying in like that, but I like to think you would have appreciated the opportunity like Daniel did.

In any event, we’re going to be starting back up with another day tomorrow, so if you could keep an eye on us and wish us luck, it would be most appreciated. After all, we’re going to need it.