Tokyo trains -- m-m-m!

There are actually two overlapping train systems, the metro and JR rail. The well-thought-out organization is a pleasure to behold. Here's three of my favourites.

1. Maps. At every station, there are large, clear maps of the system, in English and Japanese, showing the routes -- but the best part is that beside each station's dot on the map the time it takes to get there and the cost of the trip.
2. Movement management. With lots of people and huge stations, management of people is key. Arrows are painted directly on the floor and the stairs showing where you should be walking if you're going that direction, so people aren't crashing into each other like Mongols riding into battle. And people (mostly) comply!
3. Music. On the JR line, each station has its own little tune that is played before a train departs. Daydreaming commuters, or those who can't understand the announcements (which are in Japanese and English) just have to recognize their tune (before the doors close).

Dervish

The first full day was a whirlwind. I left the capsule hotel, and met up with my friend Toshiko, and then demanded she take me all over the city. Some highlights:

• Tsukiji. Early-morning sushi breakfast at the central fish market, in a tiny and packed sushi bar, eating fish caught just hours before. The best sushi I've ever had, by several orders of magnitude. Unspeakably delicious. I will never be able to eat sushi from a plastic box out of a cooler again.
• Hama Rikyu garden. Formerly a shogun's duck-hunting ponds and garden, it features a 300-year-old pine, a peony garden in full bloom, the last of the extra-puffy cherry blossoms, and a tea house (see below) on a little lake where we admired the view from tatami mats whilst consuming sweet little bean cakes and frothy bitter green tea, both delicious.
  
  
  
• Meiji Shrine. Old. Shinto. Mammoth scale. Ego-shrinking.
• Green tea frappucinos from a 3rd floor Starbucks in Shibuya, overlooking the famous scramble crossing where all pedestrians cross at once in all directions.

Like a fish to water

Tokyo is not how I thought it would be. I thought it would be interesting, which did turn out to be true, but I also thought I would find it culturally unintelligible, aesthetically sterile, overwhelmingly crowded and devoid of nature. Wrong on all counts. It feels similar to other big cities, and I immediately felt at home here, like I belong. Surprise!

Tokyo, encapsulated

First stop: Capsule Hotel Asakusa Riverside. [for readers who don't use the internet much: when you see text with a different colour, like that hotel name, you can click on it to go to another web page with more information -- then just click the 'back' button on your browser to get back here.].
For a mere 3,000 yen (Cdn$30), I had the pleasure of sleeping in this bowling alley of sleeping-shoeboxes. Each is just big enough for one person.

Despite there being a person at the reception desk, payment for the rooms is done at a vending machine. You might think that this would be helpful for the language barrier. Think again.
Toshi later tells me that the buttons offer things like meals, bath (if you want to use their Japanese-style hot tub -- which has a view of the river and a balcony -- without actually staying there), and socks, at various prices.

Free with the room, however, is a pair of slippers (you don't get more than one step inside the hotel before you remove, or if you're like me, being gesticulated at to remove, your shoes) and a light cotton garmet called a yukata. It's actually a two-piece affair, and the effect is part pyjama, part kimono, part surgical scrubs, and part Punjabi women's trousers-with-chemise combo. This is me, inside the 200 cm long capsule. It was fun, a very Japanese experience, but probably not for everyone. I already love Tokyo, at this point, and all I've seen is the hotel.

Tray-tables upright and locked

So here I am. Up early, and set to go. An eight-ish hour flight (preceded by three hours of security limbo at the airport) awaits me, and beyond that, seven weeks of The Unknown.

Out the window, in Brian's garden, I see a light rain spackling the fish pond and beading on the cherry blossoms. Something big is about to happen; there's time to kill, but nothing to do.

I've got pre-flight fidgetiness, like when you're waiting on the tarmac with your seatbelt fastened and your tray-table in the upright and locked position, but not yet moving. It's been almost fifteen years since I've been off this continent. I'm excited to go, but part of me doesn't want to leave my familiar surroundings, my friends and family, and the emerging Vancouver springtime.

Mainly, though, I'm thinking how much I'm going to miss my cats.