Going Our Own Way

Dearest Rachel –

At the risk of possibly earworming you with that old Fleetwood Mac song (which absolutely does not apply; I checked both the lyrics and the backstory, and yeah, it’s completely out of place in this context), this pretty much summed up our excursion today into Tokyo. I was okay with riding the coach into town from the port, but I didn’t have a whole lot of interest in wandering around the grounds outside the Imperial Palace for the third or fourth time – I’ve actually lost count – in the last three years or so. And that was literally the only actual stop on the trip.

Fortunately, there were others who were asking the guide if they could peel off from the group as well, so I simply followed their lead, gave her our names and room number (so she wouldn’t have to be responsible for making sure that we were on the coach for the return trip), and the two of us wandered away, to find our own way back in our own time.

Now, from a typical narrative standpoint, if I were writing a fictional story about our adventures, this is where things should have gone off the rails for Daniel and me. We should have gotten lost or hurt, or not made it back to the ship on time, or any one of a whole host of unfortunate possibilities that would have led us to regret not staying safe and with the group. We would learn some sort of valuable moral lesson through our misadventure, and come out of it all chastened, but wiser for the experience.

But that’s not what happened at all; what slight misadventures were relative hiccups that, while mildly irritating, did nothing to dissuade us from going our own way. In fact, we managed to do exactly what we had planned to, more or less, and then some… and still make our way back to the ship with plenty of time to spare, making me wonder if we shouldn’t have stayed out there under our own recognizance that much longer. But if we had, what else, exactly, would we have done?

In our defense, we had basically mapped out what we wanted to do some time ago, while conversing with Copilot about the local area in which we were to be docked (particularly once it became clear we weren’t going to be berthed in Aomi, where the Azamara Quest had been three years ago – I’d put together a list of places to visit and things to do, but when the dock got changed with less than a month to go, so did those plans). It recommended a few things that it thought might be of interest to us on the parallel island north and west of Harumi called Tsukishima, as well as how to get there by metro. Thus, with plans in hand (or at least in mind), we actually knew where we wanted to go, rather than just wandering aimlessly through Tokyo, which could get quite messy (and time-consuming) if taken too far.

Not that we didn’t do a little aimless wandering, too, especially upon initially leaving the Imperial Palace. We were of the understanding that the Tokyo Station was directly east of the palace – and on a map, that’s quite correct. But while it is – and while the station is quite big, making it theoretically impossible to miss, so are the palace grounds. As a result, we crossed under a number of tracks just far enough south of the station to completely miss it, and had to double back. Moreover, once in the station proper, it occurred to us (well, me, but I’ll give Daniel credit for being the one to notice that the maps showed no station in the Ginza, let alone one that allowed us to change trains there) that we couldn’t get where we wanted to go by way of the JR system; we had to use the Toei lines to get around where we wanted to be.

Except… for some reason, when we tried to swipe our Suica cards, the turnstiles wouldn’t let us through. I’ve since learned that the type of card we had – a red tourist version, labeled “Welcome” on it – was a stopgap measure in Japan, issued to tourists during the microchip shortage not too long ago (in fact, it may still be ongoing for all I know). It wasn’t supposed to function after a month or so – and as tourists, we wouldn’t have been concerned about it, since we would be back home in the States when it expired. The wrinkle was in the fact that we were coming back in a couple of months, and since there was an expiration date printed on it of “08/30,” I thought they would still work for us.

Guess I thought wrong. It wasn’t a big deal, though; we just bought a couple of tickets for the stop we wanted to go to. Ironically, though, that still caused a problem when we got off at Ginza; somehow, we wound up walking to a station further away on the new line from the Tsukishima station, so the overall trip went through more stations than it should have – and thus we found ourselves with a bit of trouble trying to go through the turnstiles on our way out. But the clerk observed our struggle, and waved us on through.

Once there, we did covered several miles on foot – which precluded my writing much of it down, so I apologize for the lack of detail in this letter. The same goes for the lack of pictures; I did film us as we went about our way, but I have to edit that and get those stories put up. Thankfully, we have a day at sea for me to do just that.

I’m also grateful for the fact that we managed to do everything we wanted to – which admittedly wasn’t all that much; just a quick walk through the old Tsukuda fishing village (which was very nearly deserted at that hour, much to our amazement) and a lunch of the local specialty, called monja. But I’ll go into more detail tomorrow, if you can be patient about it. Until then, though, honey, keep an eye on us, and wish us well, as we’re still going to need it.