Tokyo and back to LA

Dear Diary:

I'll keep this one brief because it's 02:30 in LA and I should have really been in bed for a while now. But it did feel good to do other things on the computer including catching up on Archer. And we both know I wasn't going to miss out on it any longer.

So, long story short in Tokyo I went to the Sky Tree. Cool name for a tower with a gorgeous observation deck. I got there and realized that it was *the* place to go see far. There was a line to buy the ticket. A line for the elevator. The line to buy the ticket to the next floor etc. I went all the way up to 450m mark. Felt high. In retrospect it's not super tall, but the height is ~137 stories which I think is significant. :P

I didn't spot anyone who I really wanted to talk to. I had a few brief conversation with this couple of girls from Britain who are now living in Hawaii and operate and observatory there. Ooh. Cosmologists. Or were they Astrophysicists? I'm not sure. We separated and then I saw them have lunch by the deck and decided to not cut into their time. There was another girl I was thinking about talking to, but she looked either really uptight or really shy. Either way I wasn't in the mood.

I took the subway to SkyTree. It was too far to walk to from Tokyo station. But the astro-girls recommended I go to this one park that we could see from the deck, so I went downstairs and headed in that direction. That only to find out that the area around SkyTree is magnetized and my Compass was showing false North. Yeahp. I went in the wrong direction. I finally corrected myself and went in the right way, until that is one of the super helpful Japanese people asked me if I needed directions. I explained where I was going and she explained in detail how to get there.

Now I don't know who fucked up. I could have been me. Or could have been her. But I ended up walking in the wrong direction again. For a while. And at that point I was hungry and sad I wasn't making much progress. I wasn't even in Tokyo. Just some city in suburbs. But! It had grocery stores. Not huge ones. But like a mom-and-pop kind. I bought cucumbers and tomatoes for food and proceeded, finally, in the correct direction.

I passed some interesting gold buildings. One of which had giant gold poop nugget on top. Got a photo from the SkyTree of it, in person from like 4 different angles. Across the channel there were ferry tours. I really wanted to take one, but I was under the impression that they were running all day and I was really close to the park I was heading for. So I decided to press on.

Ooh. The city got so cool so fast. So cool! The streets were narrow. The people were Japanese. It was crowded. It was like the mall in Sendai, but smaller. But also less touristy which made it more attractive. Very quickly thought I got stuck. I found this parlor where they did caricatures and oh my god I've always wanted one. And so I got one. I only planned to spend $13 on a simple sketch. And I was going to ask them to make it small so I could put it in my pocket.

The artist drawing me didn't speak English. She apologized that she couldn't make it smaller. Phrasing. But I digress. She was cute. I decided that extra $7 was worth putting in color into it. That way I could look at her a little longer. I kept making faces the whole time. The couple sitting next to me were getting their anniversary caricature drawn. They spoke a little English. They all kept looking at me, saying something, laughing very hard, asking me silly questions, and then it would repeat. We were all laughing for like 15 minutes non-stop. Best time of the day!

I asked if I could take a picture of my artist, Shu. She said I can take the picture of the drawing after. I explained that I wanted to take a picture of her. She said she needs to finish first. Duh. I explained that I want a photo of her working. She blushed. She said thank you and couldn't wipe the smile off her face for the next few minutes. I snapped a few photos. Such a moment

The caricature came out great. I ended up getting frame, too. Didn't want it to get ruined. Got photos with her as well. She gave me her card. It has her phone number on it and blog address. Sadly, there's nothing on the blog and I'm not about to call Japan to talk to a girl who doesn't speak English. Le sigh.

I walked through more awesome streets into the park where the temple was. There were many women in kimonos and so-so many kids. School-aged kids. With chaperons. Maybe 1500-2000 kids in total. A lot! So pretty. The sun was setting and the Temple was closing. I got to see masses rush to get their prayers in. I talked to some tourists. I thought I heard them speak Russian. But I was wrong. It was in the Slavic family but I couldn't place it. They had to go so I didn't have time to ask where they were from. Still curious.

I went to the ferry station to catch the ferry to Tokyo Station. Turned out I had missed the last one by 10 minutes. So sad. After all that I decided to head back to Tokyo station and enjoy the sights. I stopped by another grocery store and got mushrooms and cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes were fine but the mushrooms still had dirt on them. I didn't notice. That is until I bit on one that had like sand in it. Oh well. Ate it anyway.

For some reason Blink182's Adam's Song popped into my head. I looked up the lyrics and kept singing it on repeat. Nobody could understand what I was saying anyway. I knew the general direction where I was heading but decided to make a little detour and follow the setting sun. Which by the way looks way better than it does anywhere else I've seen sunsets. I don't know if it's the architecture, or the flatness of the island or what. But it was calling me. I followed. Once it set behind the buildings I got a strong urge to find something tall to climb to watch it set again. I spent the next 30 minutes walking from one staircase to another to try to find one with roof access. No dice. I think I finally found what I was looking for. And the gate was very low. Maybe 5 feet. I could have easily gone to the top. However, there was a woman in that alley just talking to someone through the door frame. Not coming or going. Just standing there and occasionally looking around. I waited for her to leave so I could do my trespass in peace, but I didn't get lucky. I saw the rooftops lose the red shade. It was over. :(

After that I really did finally just go to the Tokyo Station. GPS said 37 minutes. But this time I was tired. My feet hurt. I got blisters. My hips weren't happy. Took me over an hour to get there. Alan and Annmarie were somewhere away. Bria was heading to the station around the same time. I got to the station and was trying very hard to find where I left my bag but I kept failing. Walking was painful. I got desperate and asked somebody for help. Just a random guy. He barely spoke English. What did he do? He took me, personally to the JR entrance through which I needed to go to get to the lockers. That etiquette. USA - you suck balls when it comes to actually being decent to other human beings.

I met up with Bria and we were supposed to get on a train leaving at 19:36. Took me a minute to convince her that it was the right one. But... it was 19:38 and it hadn't left yet. That was interesting. Long story short, all of the trains were canceled. We waited around for 10 minutes for an update, then took the rapid train to another service. All of the carts on the rapid were reserved so we just walked around. It was cool. I've always wanted to do that. I saw how much nicer expensive seats are. They're nice, but nothing special.

On the private subway things were crowded. Very crowded. Once we finally got to a train that had room for us, we quickly realized that it sucks being in the middle of ever-more packed train. We had 9 stops. The first few were dreadful. I could barely hold on to something. And I was holding all of the luggage. In the mean time everyone was shoving and pushing. I'm lucky I have a strong frame. I was able to shield some people a little. Then we got to a major station and things cleared up. We made it to the airport just fine.

Their version of security was nice. It was like a small town in Pennsylvania. Everyone was friendly. Not super friendly, but they treated everyone like humans. I didn't have to take my shoes off, for example. Once at the gate... I noticed that Saya was there. She's been in Japan and like didn't reply to my message. So I unfriended her. I don't usually give people extra chances. I didn't say anything.

We had a few hours before the flight and I was going to work. But only ended up working for an hour because we got into conversation about why I dislike Feminism. I made many good arguments. My favorite by far came out when I realized that Bria for example doesn't see anything bad with only helping women. That one was easy to debunk: I told her that her version of Feminism was to succeed, you would end up with gender discrimination where men are disadvantaged. She didn't see a problem with it. I tried a few times to explain to her that gender discrimination is a bad thing. She didn't buy. I rest my case.

Then, believe it or not, Saya came up to me and said hi. Said she got my message but didn't reply. Didn't say why. I didn't inquire further. We caught up and chatted until we had to board the plane. I didn't see her after that. On the plane I sat next to a Jewish couple who we ran into at the Monkey Forest. They remembered me. I'm memorable :P Bria remembered them. We chatted for a while and exchanged Japan stories. Cool peeps. Wouldn't be friends with them though. But they made excellent plane partners.

When we reached cruising altitude I took out my work laptop and worked. The internet was cheaper than the ones on the flight to Moscow. Go $19.95 for 10 hours of internet. Or, you know, the 3 that I used it for. I fell asleep for a few hours in there. Then I realized that we'll be landing soon and frantically tried to watch something on the TV. Almost finished Trumbo. Had like 5 minutes left when the plane media system shut off. Need to find out what'd happened.

That's about it. Took Lyft home because somehow I managed to get out of the station faster than the other 3. I waited for them after every checkpoint, but only saw them once, briefly at passport check. Then when I went outside to wait for them a bus pulled up and I thought it was a sign and hopped on. Then shower. Then work. Yes work.

There was a fancy dinner event after work. The calendar event said it was from 18:00 to 19:30. I got to work just after 19:00 and decided I didn't want to pop in for just 15 minutes. So I just worked. And worked. Around 23:00 my manager, Tony came into the office and said I should've been at the dinner. Well geez. I wish I knew. :P I think I would have preferred telling Japan stories with drunk coworkers. But.. instead I worked.

That and chatted with a girl I met on OkC. I decided to give Asian girls another go because still-lingering fascination with Japan. One of them messaged back, got me on Skype and then wanted to exchange dirty pictures. When I said I don't do that at work she stopped replying. :P Fun times.

It's 03:09 now. I realize I won't be having this many adventures any time soon. I expect my posts to get duller and more meta. I was still so happy at work today. Yay good vacation! However I got a little sad on the drive back home around midnight. After all, adventure was over. I'm back to square 1. But I'm like level 70. And I just need to hope to find someone who's level 70 on level 1. But something tells me it's a rare thing.