Kyoto

In order to save a spot of money, I took the slow train back to the airport to pick up the mom and Jana. It took 30 minutes longer but was half the price. I was in no hurry.

They'd only been on the plane for 13 & 1/2 hours, which I find remarkable because it takes 16-19 hours from Dubai to Atlanta and I'd thought that was a shorter (distance) flight (turns out it is. They fly up near the pole to cut the distance). They were in good enough spirits, but very tired so we went back to the hotel.

The next morning, we braved the morning rush and went ot the main station to get on the super fast "shinkansen" bullet-train. On the subway, we were crammed like sardines; not pleasant while carrying all that luggage (I had mine crammed in a backpack). The girls each had a rolling bag. I'm amazed the sarin gas attack back in '95 killed so few. I was sure that most of Tokyo was on the subway with us.

I'd been led to believe that English was much more prevalent than it's turned out to be so far. I assumed there might be a reticence to speak English because the speaker might be embarrassed not to be fluent, but, no, the average Japanese knows almost no practical English. This is particularly apparent in regards to fashion. Just as in the State there are those who wear clothing in Oriental script (or all to often have a symbol tatooed) without having the slightest idea what it truly says, we've come across some truly bizarre word combinations emblazoned. It made the people watching while we waited for the train that much more entertaining.

Because the ticket teller didn't know English very well, we ended up getting the most expensive tickets possible. I can now say I've been on the fastest train in Japan though. We sat and played trivial pursuit as the world flew by. I won, but was aided in small part by the fact that Jana, who has bipolar disorder, discovered she'd left her limictal on her kitchen counter, so she will be spending the trip with the attention span of a crabby goldfish. Awesome.

Kyoto, as a major tourist stop, was well-marked for us and we spent our three days walking all over Shinto creation. I'll save a laundry listing of places and just say that we sall dozens of temples and pagodas and gates. As the holder of the camera, I switched between elaborately directing the girls in the shots to taking pictures when they weren't looking to get them at their most ludicrous. I was wildly successful.

For the most part, the Japanese are amazingly polite, as I'd been led to believe. Even when it's obvious I have no idea what's being said, a teller or clerk will enthusiastically chirp or bow repeatedly when I buy something. I return the bow and give my best "domo arigato" (thank you) and that sets off more bowing and beaming smiles and indecipherable gibberish that continues as I walk out the store and the door shuts behind me. It feels as though they're amazed to see a real, live westerner (a tall one at that) walking around. In fact, in the most awkward moment I've had here so far, a twenty-something man walked up to me outside the 180' tall Toji 5-Story Pagoda and pointed at me, my beard in particular, before then absent-mindedly walking away.

Jana has a friend from high school who's lived in Japan for a decade. We met up with the awesomely named Danny Mark Donny-Clark and he took us to all manner of places we wouldn't have known to look for. Donny is thin and tall with short, wavy/curly blond hair and blue eyes. For Japan, he is particularly striking looking. He's an English teacher in Kyoto and married to a gorgeous Japanese woman. He's gregarious and quick-witted and seemed perfectly at home answering as the three of us asked him different questions simultaneously, while also shouting out directions to lost Japanese tourists. When that happened, it invariably took them a moment or two to realize the faultless Japanese was coming from the American. I've met plenty of people who are fluent in other languages, but Japanese seems so alien in pronunciation and cadence that I found Danny's proficiency all the more impressive.

On our last night in Kyoto, he took us out to a restaurant and, with someone there to explain what, exactly, we were putting in our mouths, I wasn't nearly so hesitant. The girls' first night in country, Jana and I walked into a random restaurant and pulled random plates of sushi from a conveyor belt that ran in front of us. For the most part, it was nothing I hadn't seen at a sushi restaurant in the States. Except for some pink globules of gelatinous something wrapped in seaweed that I dared us to eat. I have no idea what it was and don't share Jana's eagerness to find out; if it was balleen whale embryos, I don't wanna know. Though I was devil may care that particular night, I've barely eaten here since I apparently like to know what I'm eating. With Danny around, I finally ate enough to get over the feeling of impending starvation that had begun to hit me after four or five days of barely eating.