My Tuesday morning began with a few false starts. For one thing, I had dutifully rolled out of bed at the crack of just-before-dawn to run on the hotel treadmill, where I had one of those interesting little life lessons: I was completely fine for a very respectable pace over a couple of miles, but then wrenched the hell out of my troublesome knee while reaching for the button to slow the stupid treadmill down. I think that it was just looking for an excuse, although Nick’s “never slow down” theory is under consideration as well.
So there I was limping around Tokyo alone, right? I found the museum I was looking for, but it wouldn’t open for another hour, so I headed for the park. Or I thought I did, anyway, but instead I found myself on Love Hotel Hill, where a wide variety of themed hotels with hidden entrances advertise their hourly rates. The overnight rates are actually pretty reasonable, but I hear they won’t rent for the night until fairly late, presumably to get as much use out of the room as possible. Say it with me: “Ewww.” It was bordered by the obligatory red-light district, where I was just as glad that it was still early morning, ’cause I like to think that the bright sunlight made it totally not sketchy for me to stare at the club posters and ads. My favorite was one for women named “Club Confidence,” with headshots of all the men who work there.
But finally I stumbled, blinking, across the broad green expanse of Shinjuku Park…which is closed on Mondays…unless Monday is a national holiday, in which case it’s closed on Tuesday.
Strike three for the hobbling girl.
I decided that I was in desperate need of a regroup, and picked Asakusa as my staging area. (“But we were already there,” complained Nick, who doesn’t get regrouping.) I saw the river, stopped by the shrine (considerably less busy on a weekday), and met this guy, who was singing all kinds of “thank you”‘s to the tune of “Alouette” while doing a very energetic little dance:
Hungry, I stopped in a noodle house and ordered some vegetable ramen (“No meat, no fish!” the waitress warned me anxiously, in spite of the perfectly clear English menu).
Awkwardly, I had been seated alone at the last available table, which was for four. And, of course, five minutes after my food came, two mortified-looking Japanese women were seated with me. After a few minutes, though, we were all getting along great, and they agreed to pose for a photo:
The one on the right even complimented my use of chopsticks, which was…let’s just say that it was generous of her.
I attribute our success to my ever-improving language skills. I came here able to count to eight and say “This is my dog,” and of course “Thank you.” But the first two don’t come up much, and everyone knows thank you, so I went and picked myself up a showstopper: “Excuse me.”
Oh, you wouldn’t believe the magic of a Westerner saying “sumimasen.” Seriously; some people look like they’re on the verge of applauding. You don’t get this much approval for conjugating irregular verbs in the subjunctive in Paris, and I happen to know that that’s literally true. Add it to your vocabulary now; it’s priceless.
After lunch I decided that pretty day + exhausted and limpy me = perfect timing for a river cruise. And it was:
Except for the tiny little detail where the trip turned out to be one-way. To a man-made pleasure island, with a beach. Excuse you; do I sound like I’m making this up?
Plus there were warren-like indoor malls with lots of candy, toys, accessories, and, of all things, pets. You tell me the message of this display; what I took from it is that you can either buy a fish for your fishtank, or a small plastic ball that will fill basically the same role. Maybe they’re fish toys? Do fish play?
And then there was this box, which…okay, they were alive. And about the length of your hand, and there were tons of them, just crawling around, and I still can’t quite shake the feeling that one might have latched on and followed me home:
But that probably didn’t happen.