Scenes from Japan

Note to all future spacewalkers: make sure you keep an eye — and a tether — on your toolbags. Or, as the women on some talkshow said this morning, “there’s an astronaut in space and yesterday she lost her purse!” (I’m paraphrasing; Jose saw the show, not me.) Good thing we carry backups, eh?
Oh man, this trip report going to take a while to put together. And yep, I still owe you — and my future self, who is really the person I write trip reports for — a 4th and final installment about our trip to Alaska that was three months ago. While I start going through photos, here are some funny, interesting, or memorable little things that happened, just to tide you over:

• A man approached us right after we’d gotten off the train in the gigantic Shinjuku station. We were clueless about how to navigate to the next train we needed, and he could tell. He walked us through the maze of the station all the way to the track we needed, nodded, then turned and disappeared back into the depths of the station. He wasn’t even heading in the same direction as us; he just wanted to help.
• Another example of how polite the people are: Jose witnessed what he called a “politeness battle” while we waited for a table at an unagi (eel) restaurant in Tokyo. There was only one chair left, and two women — who fought not to take the seat, but to make the other person take the seat. They went back and forth saying “dozo (please)…dozo…dozo…dozo…” until one of them finally sat down.
• People-watching was always fun, and Japanese women are very fashionable. I was always the most under-dressed woman around in my jeans and tennis shoes. They wear lots of boots. One popular look was shorts, opaque tights, and calf or knee-high boots. I couldn’t pull that off, but it worked for them. The men are often dressed in suits — none of the “business casual” look that is so common here.
• We took a day trip from Tokyo to Nikko, a small town with a national park full of shrines and temples. We made the mistake of taking this daytrip on a national holiday — Culture Day. I have never been in a national park where I was unable to move due to the crush of people surrounding me. It was interesting.
• When we got to Nikko earlier that day, we got off the train and boarded a bus that we thought would take us up the hill to the temples. It did not. In fact, it went straight where we thought it would turn left, and headed up into the hills. We sat there for a while debating what to do, and wondering where we were going. The bus was packed with people crammed in the aisle, so getting off would be difficult. Thankfully the person standing over us spoke a bit of English. “We want to go to the temples,” we said. “You are on the wrong bus!” We finally figured out that we were heading to a waterfall and hiking area. We ended up going there, walking the half mile to see the waterfall, and then going back into town. It was fun, and really pretty. I’m glad we got on the wrong bus!
• You come across a vending machine at least every few hundred feet. There are thousands of them. But the vast majority are drink machines — no snacks or candy. You can get both hot or cold drinks, which we only figured out when Jose ended up with hot milk tea. (“I was not expecting hot,” he said with a perplexed look.) We quickly figured out that the buttons were colored to let you know — blue for cold, red for hot. However, despite the abundance of drink machines, it’s nearly impossible to find a trash can to dispose of your empty drink bottle. The entire country is astonishly clean, yet there are no trash cans! I don’t understand how this works.
• Meals in Japan involve tons of tiny dishes. The day we got engaged, we went to dinner at a fancier restaurant than usual where we had a full course of appetizers, shabu-shabu (meat cooked in oil, sort of like fondue), and dessert. I swear, between the two of us, we probably went through 50-70 individual dishes. Each of the 6 or 7 appetizers was only a couple bites in size, and thus each was in its own tiny dish or cup. Dessert consisted of three more mini-courses in tiny bowls. The entree itself involved multiple dishes for sauces, etc.
• Anything you buy is exquisitely packaged. Take, for example, a pair of funny striped kneesocks that I bought. They only cost $3, yet they were folded, wrapped in tissue paper, and placed in a plastic bag which was then sealed by a small piece of tape.