Japan Tuesday April 18 2006

(Beth is one of the ladies I lunched with, and also the wife of a 3M

friend of Lee's. What's really nice is that I liked her a lot, and

Lee likes her husband. It doesn't always work like that, as you all

know!)

Oh my God I had so much fun today. For one thing it was fabulous

being with some American women, women with extensive international

experience, but still Americans. There's a common bond that's just

hard to explain to anyone else. A certain way of communicating, a

certain range of experience when it comes to child-rearing, careers,

husbands, etc.

And I have to say it right here: I'm so grateful to the upt. When

these Japan-expat ladies started talking about their bible study

groups and praying for someone, initially my liberal-Jewish warning

radar went up. But then, almost as quickly, so did my knowledge that

there are good, kind, fascinating, worth-getting-to-know women

behind this cultural difference. In FACT, I found myself wondering

if these could be upt ladies in disguise! Funny. For the rest of my

life I will probably feel an immediate bond with evangelical

Christians where-ever they might be, and all because of Jill and

Ginia….

I am feeling so cocky about riding the Tokyo subways. They are 10

times more complicated than HK, yet I find myself thinking, "What's

the worst thing that can happen?" The Japanese are so kind and so

honest all I have to do is stand someplace for awhile looking lost

and confused and someone will come up to me and say "English?" and

then proceed to help me. I can usually figure out what line to take;

my biggest problem this morning was trying to figure out the fare.

I've figured out that in general the fare is the same and if you

underpay you just use the fare adjustment window so I think I've

conquered that one too.

After lunch Beth took me on a tour that was just awesome. She took

me to the Hama-riku gardens…this was more Bonsai and less cherry

blossoms but still very pretty. Then she took me to a Japanese tea

house and we did a very simplified tea ceremony. How cool was

THAT!!!! She knows enough Japanese to make simple conversation with

people and break the ice. People would volunteer information about

things and she would translate for me. It made me long to know a

LITTLE bit of the language in Hong Kong. I hope I can learn

something over time. The tea house was fun, if a bit mysterious. We

took off our shoes and sat down on a felt carpet, along the tatami

mats. They brought us a bowl of green tea and a "sweet" which was

bean paste, but tasted just like marzipan to me. Almond paste, bean

paste…not much difference! They bowed, I bowed, and we smiled and

watched. Very simple, very beautiful.

After the tea ceremony we went on a water bus boat ride on the

Sumida river…. There are twelve bridges, each a different color.

The "yarrow" bridge, the "brue" bridge. We passed a building that

looks like a bottle of beer, and another building that looks like it

has a turd on top of it. The locals call it the poo-poo building,

and nobody seems to know WHAT it's really supposed to be. On the

boat with us were a group of Japanese school girls, all in uniform,

all as cute as could be. They waved to everyone on the bridges; some

people waved back; one Japanese businessman bowed seriously in

return. It was just the cutest thing I've ever seen. I took a

picture of them. It came out GREAT; it's my favorite picture that

I've taken so far of anything.

After THAT she took me to the imperial palace grounds. You can't

really go inside the gates, but there are all these Buddhist temples

around the periphery and lots and lots of Japanese tourist shops. We

had Starbucks, we took pictures and we ate another Japanese treat,

this one some kind of pastry with a piece of sweet potato inside.

At this point I decided that I was ready to take the subway back to

Yokohama. I didn't want to risk getting caught on the trains at rush

hour. If someone started squishing ME into a train it was possible

that I'd just slug them. Beth said it was fun but I might just save

that experience for another time.

I made it back to Yokohama just in time to go out to dinner with the

3Mers. We went to a Shabu-shabu restaurant, which is where you have

these pots of broth boiling in front of you on the table and you

cook beef and different vegetables in the pot and then eat the broth

with noodles at the end. It was delicious and it was fun talking to

the guys. Besides typical 3M guys from the US (including a lot that

had lived in Austin or St. Paul at one time or another) there were

guys from Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, China, Japan AND Hong Kong

(natives I mean) and they were also fun to talk to and they told me

all kinds of stuff on miscellaneous topics from the subway system in

HK to different foods to try in different countries. Too bad they

were guys and really couldn't give me the lowdown on shopping!

I just had a great time today. Tomorrow will be more low-key. I'm

going to run, take my time and be lazy, and eventually take "the

number 8 bus" to the gardens outside of Yokohama. On Thursday I'll

meet Beth in Tokyo again and she's going to take me to the Edo

museum.