Back in Japan!

Greetings from 30,000 feet or so above the Pacific Ocean just east of Japan (the pilot just told everybody on the right side of the plane, which does not include me, that they can see Mt. Fuji). I’m on a Singapore Airlines flight heading from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport to Singapore on the second leg of another one of my two week Asia tours. I’ve been in Japan for the past four days and have this vague feeling that I’m going the wrong way, ha; I saw planes from American and Delta Airlines near my gate and just wanted to yell ‘Take me with you!!!’ Still, every trip has new experiences and this one includes flying with Singapore Airlines which, last time I paid attention, was rated one of the top airlines in the world for service. Unfortunately, I think that may be synonymous with ‘not having any flight attendants over the age of 30’; makes me wonder if it’s only middle-aged business traveling men voting for these things. Oh wait, that will be me in a few years. Nevermind.

It’s 6.5 hours or so to Singapore which gives me some primo time to get my travel thoughts down. So here goes:

I started my trip with a new blunder: I didn’t book the proper day for my shuttle. Rather than have Super Shuttle pick me up at the house on Monday, June 18 at 5:15am, I had scheduled it for Wednesday, JULY 18 at 5:15am. Of course, I didn’t realize this until calling Super Shuttle at 5:45 wondering where my van was.

Ooh...maybe Singapore Airlines deserves the high marks after all. I’ve just been handed, for the first time ever in my flying career I think, a breakfast menu. I have a choice of salmon, vegetables and rice or baked egg with bacon, beans, mushrooms and potatoes. Since I’m in Asia, I think it’s more likely they do a better job with their salmon than their ‘Western’ breakfast. And if I want, I can wash it down with a Singapore Sling cocktail (I think I’ll stick with water thanks).

Anyway, it was actually Jennifer, who was waiting up with me while the Kid slumbered, who realized my shuttle error. So in about seven minutes we had the Kid up and at ‘em and him and the pooch loaded in the minivan for an early morning cruise to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (it’s int’l only because there are flights to and from Cancún, Mexico). Since there is zero traffic in Austin at 6 in the morning and my flight didn’t leave until 7:35, I knew we were good. And so it was. It stunk for Jennifer to have to drive me but from my perspective, a goodbye said at the airport is a million times better than the goodbye in the living room of your house when it’s dark outside, you’re trying to be quiet so as not to wake your son and the Super Shuttle is waiting for you. Plus Jennifer was already packed up to take the Kid and Pooch to Dallas to stay with my in-laws and the Kid wakes up at 6am anyway so it wasn’t too much of a hassle for them.

The other good thing about that goodbye was that I think for the first time the Kid truly gets the fact that I’m traveling on an airplane and won’t be back for a while. He knows what an airplane is (we’ve been tracking the ones that arrive from points north and fly over our house for maybe the past year) and now has definitely made the connection that I’ll be on one. That and Jennifer shows him on the map where his daddy is. Actually, Jennifer told me he actually looks up in the sky in Dallas and talks to the airplanes that fly overhead like I’m on them. Awesome.

I arrived at my gate in plenty of time to catch my American Airlines flight to Los Angeles Int’l Airport (LAX). I say this all the time but I love Austin-Bergstrom for the very reason it’s easy in and easy out. No crowds and on nice days that I park my car I can actually walk to the airport. The downside is that it’s more difficult to get direct flights but there seem to be more and more popping up everyday (now you can fly direct to Washington, DC, yay). Yes, these are the things the near middle-aged business traveler thinks about.

 I love flying west because the scenery is better and the likelihood of cloud cover blocking your view is much, much lower since there is so much less precipitation. The travel agents for work had done their magic again and hooked me up with a window seat just behind the wing, the place I like to be, so I had an awesome view of the 2.5 hour or so uneventful flight. Unusually for me, I didn’t try to talk to my seatmate until we had landed. He was actually a pilot for DHL who lives in Austin but was about to chill out for 12 hours in LA then fly a plane to Leipzig, Germany, hang out for 30 hours, fly another plane to somewhere in Asia (I forget), then fly back to LAX. He works usually 20 days straight with 11 days off. See, it’s people like that (and of course soldiers on deployment) that keep me from complaining about being away from my family so much. But at the same time, it’s the career you choose, you know?

Anyway, the DHL pilot also has a two year old son which of course made me think of the Kid. I’ve reached a stage now that I enjoy seeing other peoples’ kids, regardless of age. Quite often it brings a smile to my face. I don’t remember if I used to be jealous when I saw people with their kids while on my trips but I know that back in the pre-childless and even pre-marriage days when Jennifer and I were going out I would be envious when I saw boyfriend/girlfriend and husband/wife pairs, particularly the closer in age they were to me. WHY ARE YOU ABLE TO BE WITH YOUR LOVED ONE AND ENJOY THIS BEAUTIFUL PLACE TOGETHER WHEN I HAVE TO ENJOY IT BY MYSELF?!!!! Sigh. I’m over that now. I’m just thankful I’m there to enjoy the beautiful place in the first place though, as those of you who’ve been reading me for a while, I purposely avoid the super awesome places like, say, the Louvre in Paris so that I can save the experience for when Jennifer and I are there together (or maybe with the kids though of course the three most boring hours of my life were spent at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art when I was 11 years old).

I had a three hour layover in LAX before catching my flight to Tokyo’s Narita Airport. The airline was going to be my old buddies at Korea Air which, if you’ve read my prior material, you may remember that I flew on my last Asia trip. I get a kick out of their baby blue planes and friendly staff, even if none of the female flight attendants are older than 26 and it’s kind of creepy how they all have their hair rolled up tight in a bun with a little baby blue ribbon/pin/thingy in the back.

I had another window seat for the Korea flight, this time right on the wing so I couldn’t see much of the ground. This wasn’t a problem for the flight since we were going to be going mostly over the ocean. There’s nothing to see when you’ve over the ocean except usually clouds so no worries there. I also had something even more important: my old friend Ambien. Ambien is the only sleeping pill that works on me and I was excited to have a stash again. Ecstatic. I had slept terribly the night before and was determined not to stay awake the whole flight to Tokyo (which would arrive around 3pm Tokyo time). Once we had reached cruising altitude, I popped one. Used to be I’d warn the person sitting next to me but this time I chose not to do so lest the person, a middle-aged American guy, think I was nuts. I love Ambien so much, we might name the next kid that, boy or girl.

I waited five minutes, put in my earplugs, put on my eye mask, wrapped a blanket around my neck and waited for Mr. Sandman. And waited. And waited. After maybe ten minutes of feeling foolish, I figured it wasn’t going to work and took everything off. Dinner came by and, even though I didn’t feel hungry, I took the tray. Here’s what I remember after that:

Telling the flight attendant that I didn’t want her to take away my dinner tray, even though I hadn’t touched it.

Opening my eyes to find the dinner tray was gone.

Holy smokes, it worked! I’d been out for about four hours which was absolutely awesome for an eleven hour flight. It doesn’t sound like much but I knew that would be enough to get me through the rest of the day without significant tiredness and would allow me to sleep once I was in Japan. I hope I hadn’t done anything crazy while I was asleep...

I spent the rest of the flight watching three movies: Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, The Secret of Arrietty (the new Hayao Miyazaki animated film) and an Australian movie called Tracker (which could have been a Western and was quite good). After we landed I decided to apologize to the guy next to me in case I’d done anything strange. He said nothing except for the...

 Oops, breakfast time! Let’s see how this goes.

Yum, salmon for breakfast. Konnichiwa!

So the guy next to me told me I didn’t want to give the flight attendant my dinner but she came by after a few minutes and took it anyway since I was zonked out. The guy had seen me take the pill and, having been a sleeping pill user himself in his earlier days, sympathized. He’d decided to stay up the whole trip, something I usually do. He said I didn’t do anything else weird and I have to believe him. Anyway, I have a 1am-6am flight coming up from Singapore to Shanghai when I’ll make use of the Ambien again for sure.

Tokyo was enveloped in clouds and fog from 35,000 feet pretty much down to a minute or two before landing. Those kind of descents are always interesting as you pass through multiple layers of clouds and thankfully, for my turbulence-phobic self, rarely bumpy. And presto, I’d returned to Tokyo.

It had been four and a half years since my first and only previous visit to Tokyo or Japan in general actually. I remembered a few things about it:

- it was exceptionally clean
- there were tons of people but it never felt stressed like New York City does
- I love listening to people speak Japanese because everybody always sounds so happy
- Better be prepared to eat a lot of fish

After four days there, I have now added to my level of knowledge and my experiences. But first, some vocabulary:
- Hai! (must always be said with an exclamation mark)
– Yes - Eea (sounds like eee-ee ay)
– No - Subarashii – wonderful
- San – Mr or Mrs. My name in Japanese would be Beck san.
- Meegee – right (as in, turn right here Cab Driver san)
- Hirodi (I think) – left
- Dai jobe – ok/whatever (I really wish they were two different words)
- Campai – Cheers!
- Oosoi – you’re late! As in
  o Me to Nishimura san who had arrived late to a business dinner: “Nishimura san! Subarashii!”
  o Japanese Customer who does not really speak English and had consumed a rather large beer and two glasses of what must have been sake: “No. Nishimura san, oosoi!”
  o Me: “What does that mean?”
  o Japanese Customer: “Nishimura san, you are late!”
  o (all laugh uproariously)
- Sayonara – good-bye. Problem is I’m used to hearing sayonara in action movies right before somebody kills somebody else. I prefer to use the other acceptable term: bye-bye.
- Darvish – Beck san, you are from Texas!
  o For those who don’t get the reference, Yu Darvish is the half Iranian, half Japanese superstar pitcher who recently left his Japan league team to pitch for the Texas Rangers.
  o After asking people what they thought about good Japan league players leaving the league to go to Major League Baseball, the reply was most people are happy because usually the player plays for a competing team, eh.

It’s funny because this trip is my first to Japan where I really needed to be the consummate professional/international businessman. This means being able to do the following:

- Dress the part. For a man, this means black slacks, white shirt and preferably a black suit jacket. I swear I was the only businessperson in downtown Tokyo wearing a green polo. Though to be fair, I suppose downtown New York or downtown Washington, DC are the same way.
- Bow properly. This is not as easy as you think because I don’t always know when to bow. I know to do it when greeting someone but exactly when? It’s easier with a handshake because with a handshake, you have to shake hands at the same time. With a bow, it’s like synchronized swimming because you need to bow at the same time but not touch each other (ouch). But then comes the question of how low to bow? If you’re in sales and you’re talking to a customer, your upper body almost needs to be parallel to the ground. But what about meeting a service provider? And do I look at the ground or look at the person? Bowing can be fun but when it really means something it’s a bit more serious.
- Clinking glasses properly while saying ‘Cheers’ (campai!). When you clink glasses, the most senior person’s glass is supposed to be higher. Well, was I the highest because I had Director in my title? Good thing as an American obviously a bit new to Japan I was being cut some slack. Or was I?
- Giving and receiving business cards. In the US, it’s easy because you give with one hand and take with your free hand. I do it without any second thoughts. But in Japan, you have to use two hands AND bow. Holy smokes. Even without the bowing, it’s tricky to extend the card holding it with two hands while the other person does the same, then seamlessly take their card while they are taking yours. Sometimes while you have your other business cards that you have to give to everyone else in the meeting tucked in your palm. I never figured it out while I was in Japan but eventually I did, even though Singapore and China don’t require the bowing and sometimes not even both hands.
- And I’m sure there are a lot of little things I don’t know about but I should at least be aware of. I’ll learn.

OK, now I’m in the Shanghai Airport waiting for my Korean Air flight to Seoul. I’ll get to that later in the travelogue but now, back to Japan!

I did get to do some sight-seeing while I was in Tokyo on the Saturday before flying out. I strolled out of my hotel around 8:30am for a walk around the city, at least places within walking distance of my hotel. Tokyo is such an awesome city due to its cleanliness and quiet traits which are seemingly hard to find in such a big, crowded place. Plus it just feels like there is a lot of culture while walking on the streets, whether from tall buildings, little apartments tucked away in corners, baseball fields in small spaces surrounded by fences that must be ten stories tall and children’s playgrounds that each have their own personality. It’s quite difficult to describe how I felt while walking around but mainly I was at peace, enjoying this city as much as I could as a visitor while thankful that I didn’t have to live there. Anyway, if you’re reading this, you’ve seen the photos on Facebook.

The one notable thing was that, for the first time in my traveling career, I had to take a taxi to complete a walk. Not only did I end up way far away from where I thought I was, I had to meet an old friend from my previous job at 1pm back near my hotel. At 12:45 I realized that wherever I was, I wasn’t anywhere close to where I needed to be and hailed a cab. And so it goes. I knew it would happen sometime but seriously, every walk I’ve ever taken in any city has always been a loop where I’ve managed to get back to my hotel. Usually though I’m not on a deadline so I’ll use that as an excuse.

My old buddy Manabu, who I hadn’t seen in 4.5 years until the night before when we met for dinner at an awesome little Japanese restaurant, was going to take me on a bus tour of Tokyo and a Japanese bathhouse. The bus tour was really more of a sight-seeing tour of a couple of local sights. We first went up in the 40 story tall World Trade Center to get a 360 degree view of downtown. Then we went to the Emperor’s Palace which actually is more accurately termed the Emperor’s Compound since you can’t get inside the walls to see the actual palace (the Emperor himself only emerges to be seen by the general public on his birthday, Dec. 23, and Jan 2). After that we went to a major Bhuddist temple which was crowded with people but quite interesting to check out, particularly for the rituals associated with good luck and curing ailments (which included have your affected body part touched by incense smoke).

Afterward we took a cruise down the river to the harbor with tons of other local tourists. One note about the tour: this was the first time I can remember ever being with a tour group led by someone carrying around a little flag on a small pole such that everyone in the group knew where he was and where we were going. There are three types of tour groups:
1. Tour groups with a guide but no discernible connection other than they’re standing in a group following one person who is usually walking backwards.
2. Group 1 but the person walking backwards has a flag.
3. Group 2 but they’re all wearing an identical article of clothing such as a t-shirt or hat.

Thank you Manabu for not booking a Group 3 tour.

After the bus tour, Manabu and I hopped a train to the Japanese bathhouse, called an ‘oosen’. The train was a monorail that took us on a bridge over Tokyo Bay to a spit of land that looked like it had been constructed of dirt fill quite recently. It was perfectly flat with buildings spaced widely apart, including the bathhouse. My image of a bathhouse was something tucked away in a back alley with 17th century architecture. This bathhouse was more of the Schlitterbahn of bath houses, catering expressly to families and groups. I didn’t care; I wanted to experience what the Japanese experience, even if it didn’t require any clothing. Here are the e-mails between Manabu and I about the subject:

 Manabu: Japanese Hot-Spring theme park (http://www.ooedoonsen.jp/higaeri/english/index.html) This is in tokyo and it took around 30min from Hamamatsu-cho station. I've been there once and there's entertainment besides Onsen as well and that is pretty fun. You can wear Japanese Yukata (kind of kimono) and feel Japanese old festival style.
Me: Excellent! If we’re going to use the baths, I brought my swimsuit.
Manabu: In Japan, basically, we cannot wear swimsuit in the Baths. So if you don't wanna take bath, probably it would be better that we can try one day bus trip instead of half day.

Let me say that I enjoyed the bathhouse immensely. I would go back at the first opportunity, solely for how relaxed I felt while I was there. It was a little strange of course but I’m not lying when I say it was totally family friendly. Let me explain.

You enter the bathhouse (I did not take any photos of course so you’ll have to be dependent on my descriptions) through a main door into a lobby. Off to your left are lockers, at the far end is a spot where people are being handed kimonos. Down the way is a desk where you pay. And in the middle, not unlike a movie theater lobby, is a queue where you wait to pay. We had arrived at 5:50 and sat here with many others to await the discounted evening rate to begin at 6. There were all sorts of people there. There were families with little children, teenagers in groups, boyfriend/girlfriend combos and random Japanese of all ages. I counted maybe four white-skinned people, all men between the ages of 20 and 40, the whole time I was there. Excellent.

The first step actually upon entering the bathhouse is to remove your shoes and place them in the lockers in the lobby. Yes, just your shoes. So everybody gets to see your nappy socks and nasty feet, ha! You take your locker key and other belongings and deposit your credit card with the clerks. You are then handed a bracelet with barcode on it and a key attached (it rotates into a hidden fold in the bracelet). After putting the bracelet on, we headed to the back of the lobby to select a kimono. Yep, even as a guy I was going to wear a kimono. Awesome. There were three designs to choose from so of course I chose the most silly-looking, one with a fat samurai wrestling a huge fish on the back.

 With our folded kimonos in our arms, Manabu and I proceeded through a curtain into the men’s locker room. In there, we found our lockers, stripped down to our underwear and put on our kimonos. Manabu tied my sash for me (the sash is seriously like ten feet long) and out we went into the main area, still with our key/barcode bracelets but wrapped up in our cool kimonos.

The main area is a bit like the mini-bazaar, complete with little booths to buy trinkets, a food court, two different small stages for performers and stalls for games not unlike you’d see at an amusement park. The atmosphere at the point though was totally Japanese bathhouse with dark lighting, a lowish ceiling and fake wood walls. Oh, and probably five hundred people walking around wearing identical kimonos. We would eat later; it was time to take a bath!

In order to take a bath, you have to get third locker. This time we went into the bath locker room (for men) and fully stripped down, taking a locker key to hang on your wrist and leaving your barcode/key bracelet behind. And your underwear. And your kimono.

Disclaimer: For those who don’t want to hear me wax ecstatic about being nude in public, please skip down a few paragraphs to the spot marked ‘IT’S OK TO READ NOW’. And for those on the fence, Jennifer has already edited this whole blog to keep me from completely embarrassing myself.

 Now, for my own posterity, I’ll wax on nudity. I’ve been using men’s locker rooms for time out of mind and walking around without clothes is just a thing you do. You don’t usually make eye contact with strangers though and you don’t look down except when necessary to make sure you don’t trip over a bar of soap. It doesn’t bother me. I’ve always felt that I could go to Hippie Hollow and as long as I knew no one was taking pictures I’d be good. Yet, I don’t have the urge to go naked in public so I’ve never been. Anyway, we were all born naked and the human body is the human body so it doesn’t bother me.

Back to the locker room. Now, you’re not entirely without cover. A washcloth is provided to you to take into the bath. It is large enough to sufficiently cover yourself. I decided that I would show that this American has nothing to hide. So with the washcloth held loosely at my side, I walked into the bath.

There are several steps before entering the actual baths. First, you have to wash yourself off a bit at a trough using a bowl. I never asked Manabu if it was ceremonial or not because the next step was to take a shower. Yep, a shower. And not just any shower: a seated shower. There were two rows of little stalls with low mirrors, bath soaps and stools to sit on. Thankfully the showerheads were on a cord so, after feeling awkward for about ten seconds while trying to wash myself while seated, I said to heck with it and stood up. Most people were still seated but to each his own.

Once the shower was done we could get into the tubs. There were several rather large ones to choose from. There was a slightly elevated one under a little roof. There was a bigger one level with the floor. There was one off to the side with little jets of water shooting out of the walls. There was one outside in a little walled compound set to look like a real Japanese garden (complete with rocks and everything in and around the bath). And there was even a cold one to sit in but it could only hold about six people without rubbing against each other.

There were lots of males in the bath. I only caught a couple of them looking up as I walked in but really, who doesn’t look up when there is movement sometimes? Manabu and I would chill out in one of the hot tubs for 5-10 minutes (I wasn’t trying to keep track of time), then we’d move to another one. It was so humid in the house I started to sweat, even though I was up to my neck in the hot water (at about 104 degrees it was quite hot), so we moved outside where the nighttime temperature was in the low 70s. That was quite nice so we stayed there for a while. Then we moved inside again and I alternated between the hot tubs and the cold tub (which at 68 degrees felt like it was about 36 but felt really, really good once you were in it). We were in there for at least an hour and it was awesome.

One last comment: when you’re in a jacuzzi with a swimsuit on, well, there are some parts of you that the water doesn’t get to. This is not the case in a Japanese bath house :)


IT’S OK TO READ NOW!!!!!!


When we left the bath, we showered (not together) and put on our underwear and kimonos again. We ate a nice little Japanese dinner in the food court with all of the other patrons (all wearing the six available styles of kimonos, three for each gender). Then we hit the doctor fish. What are doctor fish, you ask? They’re fish that eat your dead skin. Awesome. Manabu and I entered this little hut that had a shallow, square-shaped and recessed tank that was just large enough to hold sixteen people seated on the edges and just deep enough so that the water went to the middle of your calves. And then these little fish swam over and started nibbling on my feet. It felt really tingly at first but after that felt kind of good. The funny thing was that my feet had about five times as many fish on them as anybody else, so much that about every two minutes or so the other six people in the hut would chuckle simultaneously (the first time they did I responded with a perfectly-timed shrug and ‘Sorry’). Here’s a link with more info and a photo: http://health.howstuffworks.com/skin-care/problems/treating/doctor-fish.htm

I can’t say if it made my feet look nicer or cleaner but it definitely was relaxing.

After the doctor fish session we chilled out in the foot bath, basically an outdoor Japanese garden with a fake little stream running through it. You could sit on the edge and soak just your feet in the hot water. If you wanted to truly relax, or so the signs said, you could walk the length of the stream which was maybe fifty feet. The problem was that the bottom was embedded with polished stones sticking straight up which HURT to walk on. Manabu and I gave up after about five feet.

After the foot bath, it was 9pm and time for us to get back to town since my flight the next morning would leave at 6:25am. Manabu and I took the train to a station close to the hotel, I walked with him to his train station, we parted ways and I was off to walk another half mile or so in the dark. It’s always wonderful seeing old friends and visiting places you enjoy but it’s also always bittersweet to leave. At least on business trips to multiple places you get used to saying goodbye. And with my job being the way it is, being truly responsible for trade compliance around the world for the company and being in the weeds everywhere, I’ll be back sooner than later (though hopefully not too soon...I need to be home for the arrival of the next kid).