Skipping Town

(Written on Friday, posted on Saturday) It poured again in Nikko today. We woke early and began the morning with a yoga class with a Zen Buddhist monk; the monk chanted at the end of the class during a brief meditation, while the rain kept pouring down outside. (Andrew had been resistant to the class, until it became clear that I was the only one in the lodge who had signed up; being the nice husband that he is, he agreed to go with me.) After breakfast, we took a brief walk in the rain to "Nikko beer," which Andrew had hoped would involve a brewery tour; but there were just a few things for sale in the shop. The walk was very moody; fog was settling over the mountaintops, and wet leaves were matted along the roads and sidewalks. It was perfectly silent except for the raindrops in the trees. We headed to the train station around eleven; the mountains we spotted in the distance were snow-capped. We saw a white loon lightly stepping its way across a small river. Along the way w...

(Written on Thursday; posted on Saturday) It was another early day. We left the Oakwood Apartments around 6am and headed to the train station to catch our train to Nikko. We didn’t need to leave that early--our train wasn’t leaving until 8:10--but our friend Atsh told us that it was not a good idea to get on the subway with our suitcases during rush hour. He told us that it’s not uncommon for people to actually be separated from their suitcases in the crush of people--and it’s also not uncommon to see "floaters," people whose feet actually don’t touch the ground because they’re crammed in so tightly. It seemed prudent to leave a bit early. As we waited for the train to arrive, we bought cans of coffee from a vending machine on the platform; our favorite, the Georgia brand cafÈ crËme, which has a can that reads "Little gift for you," was not available; so we chose Wonda brand cafÈ au lait, which promised a perfect "coexistence of roasted coffee and roasted milk...

Our day began at a normal time for once--10am--with coffee at a Starbucks-like chain called Tully's in Shinjuku, not far from our hotel. We then headed to East Shinjuku, an area that beckoned with its copious neon; we've eyed it from the subway station each time we return home. Though it was too early in the day for the neon to show its true splendor, the area was a distinct shift from the other areas of Shinjuku we'd seen: seedier, dirtier, much more Times Square circa 1989. The highlight was walking along the narrow alleys of Golden Gai, a collection of tiny bars (five or six counter stools) with doors so narrow that the majority of Americans would be unable to fit through. These bars are notorious for the after-work debauchery of Tokyo's "salarymen," and I'd read that a) not many of the bars welcome foreigners, and b) if you do go in, know what you're getting into, because it's entirely possible you'd be charged $100 for a beer. True or not,...

Another day, another alarm set for 4:30am. This time, however, our trip to the Tsukiji fish market was a success. And what an experience it was. The Tsukiji fish market is the largest fish market in the world, and it's renowned especially for its tuna auction--some of the tuna can fetch as much as $10,000 each. The tuna are caught and frozen, then brought to the market, where they're auctioned off and then carted away. Walking around the fish market is an exercise in chaos and treachery. Though tourists are tolerated, no concessions are made to them, and if I had to give a tourist just one piece of advice, it would be this: First, get out of the way--THEN worry about taking pictures. Besides people in rubber aprons rushing everywhere, there are many different types of vehicles--motorbikes, carts, one-person tru cks--veering and speeding in every direction down the narrow aisles. They stop for no one. We managed to escape without injury, but I can't imagine this is the case ...

A mixture of excitement and jet lag kept me from sleeping much Sunday night, so I was up well before our 4:30am alarm on Monday morning. That's right--4:30am. We planned to go to one of the top attractions of Tokyo--the Tsukiji fish market, which gets going in the wee hours--when jet lag would make getting up early a little less painful. It was our first stint on the Tokyo subway, and though it took a bit of map-scrutinizing and map-turning-upside-downing, we eventually found our way. But at the subway exit at our destination, a sign awaited us: Tsukji fish market was closed. We were floored. "You've got to be kidding," another thwarted tourist said. We learned later that it was a national holiday; too bad we didn't know that before starting out! Unsure what to do now that we literally had the entire day ahead of us, we headed to Harajuku to see the Meiji shrine, which we knew would be open at that hour. On our way, we stopped and got cans of coffee from a vending...

We arrived in Tokyo around 8pm. Our first challenge: get yen from an ATM then get tickets for the train from the airport into the city. The airport was easy to navigate, and whenever we stopped for a moment, looking confused, someone instantly approached us to help, pointing us in the right direction. Our second challenge: get from Shinjuku station in Tokyo to our hotel, the Oakwood Apartments Shinjuku. This would be easy in a city that actually had names for the streets; on the copious maps we've accumulated, however, the best have--at most--a few major thoroughfares marked and that's it. Tokyo, for all its cutting-edge modernity, lags a bit behind in the street-naming area. We'd gotten directions from the hotel's website--a four-page document that included photos of what we'd see when we exited the station, made certain turns, etc. The directions included things like "you'll see a BEEF BOWL restaurant" and "on your left will be th JUMBO pachinko...

There's nothing like starting off an 11-hour flight with a Death Sprint through an airport. On Saturday, our flight from Sacramento to Seattle was delayed for about 40 minutes because of excessive fog. Our f light from Seattle to Tokyo left at 12:35. At 12:15, we were still in the air. The flight attendant arranged for us to get off the plane first--along with four other international travelers with tight connections--and advised us, helpfully, to run as fast as we could. The minute we got off the plane, Andrew and I took off at a full sprint; we left the other four people in the dust. Who had time to debate which direction to head? Running up and down escalators; dodging other travelers; screaming at the people on the shuttle train to HOLD THAT TRAIN--by the time we found the right terminal, we were nearly passing out. Finally, we found the gate--sweating, folded over at the waist, our diaphrams wheezing, convulsing wreaks--only to find out that the flight had been delayed by over...

We leave tomorrow! After so many months and weeks of waiting, our departure day is finally here. This is a momentous trip for many reasons, not least because it’s the first time we’ve left the country since leaving Spain. We’ve traveled a lot since then, but only in California and environs, with several trips back East; the new passport I got after changing my name has yet to be graced with a stamp. Japan: not a bad first entry. Perhaps more interestingly, this is the first trip we’ll have taken with Obama as our new president. No longer will we face skeptical raised eyebrows and questions like “So what do you think of Bush?” (Not that we’d necessarily face those eyebrows and questions in Japan; but we certainly did in Europe.) No longer will we feel compelled to shield our passport covers in busy security lines or to lie about being Canadian. It’ll be a while before we fully deserve to holds our head high in other countries, but I feel like the very fact that we elected Obama is reaso...

Last night, Andrew and I watched Lost in Translation to further get in the mood for our trip. What a great movie—I’d forgotten how exhausted and defeated Bill Murray looks, and how perfectly Sophia Coppola captures the disorientation that comes from being chronically jet-lagged in a city where nothing at all is familiar. We’ve both seen the movie before (several times for me), but this time we watched it with the eyes of people who would soon be following in Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson’s footsteps. (Not their footsteps to the Park Hyatt, but ah well.) Navigating the crowds at Shibuya crossing? Staring perplexedly at a subway map? Taking the bullet train to Kyoto? In just two days, that will be us. Strangely enough, it turns out that the lodging we chose in Tokyo—the Oakwood Apartments Shinjuku—is part of the same “temporary residence” chain (furnished apartments rather than hotel rooms) in which the film crew stayed during the shooting. Seeing Lost in Translation when it came ...

We’re getting down to the nitty-gritty, figuring out what to pack, calling around to Citibank in an effort (failed) to get some yen in advance. I’ve stopped our mail and newspapers, alerted our credit card to our whereabouts, and will soon have a consolidated list of all of our lodgings’ addresses and phone numbers and, hopefully, maps for getting there. We realized last night that two weeks is a very long trip—even in Spain the longest we took was around twelve days. We will get a solid immersion in the country and, hopefully, a good sense of both the touristy attractions and the day-to-day. Tonight’s agenda: some preliminary packing, a trip to the gym, a trip to Target for camera cards. Three days…

In just four days, Andrew and I will be on our way to Japan. This trip managed to sneak up on us, despite the fact that just a few weeks ago it seemed like it would never get here. Now we’re finishing up our last-minute planning and purchasing and getting ready to leave. This weekend, we attempted to watch two Japanese movies to get into the Japan mood. Saturday it was Tokyo Story . Sunday it was Maborosi . During both, I fell almost instantly to sleep, relegating them to the land of movies that have an immediate soporific effect on me: Pirates of the Caribbean , Master and Commander , Star Wars . Not a successful effort. Two more should arrive from Netflix before we leave, so we’ll see how we fare with those. I’m doing some last-minute Japan reading as well, Some Prefer Nettles by Junichiro Tanizaki; last week we bought a few more books to take with us, so our immersion in Japanese literature (much more successful than our immersion in Japanese film) can continue while we’re away. To...

On Saturday, Andrew and I headed to Napa for a day of paella-making with Beth and Nate and the babies. We had gotten a paella pan and ingredients for a wedding gift, but hadn’t yet put them to use; paella is definitely something you have to make for more than two people. It was unseasonably warm on Saturday, in the high-70s (by “unseasonably” I mean “unseasonably for the Northeast”), but nonetheless Napa was beautiful, with the vines changing to gold and red, set against a bright-blue sky. After some debate, Andrew and I decided to adapt a recipe from Penelope Casas’s The Foods & Wines of Spain for our paella. Friday night, we’d watched a video of the NYT’s Mark Bittman cooking a simple tomato paella, and it looked easy enough—it seemed like the kind of dish that, like a soup, you could pretty much just toss anything into. After a trip to the Napa Whole Foods for provisions, we were ready to begin. In theory and in practice, cooking paella is not that difficult—cook some things in...

Apparently, McDonald’s missed the memo: McCain/Palin lost; anti-intellectualism and nonidiomatic grammar as “real America” are dead. You’d think a company that massive would understand that the world has changed. I’m talking about the newest line of McDonald’s commercials, promoting their coffee drinks. For anyone who hasn’t seen them, they go like this: Two friends are having coffee in a coffee house. The scene is set with all the indicators of what McDonald’s apparently perceives as “elite”: jazz music, turtleneck sweaters, wire-framed eyeglasses, “sophisticated” reading material. One friend dismissively asks the other, “Have you heard McDonald’s is now offering coffee drinks?” His tone is snooty, but he glances at his friend, testing the waters. Suddenly, the floodgates open. Both friends joyfully admit they love McDonald’s, hate sitting in snobby coffee houses, hate turtlenecks, hate their wire-framed glasses, and absolutely love football. In a sister commercial with two women, the...

Oh, hello. It’s been a busy week here in “Sacto”—a busy week of leaving the house. Sunday, I drove Andrew to the airport (business trip to NYC), went to the farmer’s market, went to yoga, and went grocery shopping. Monday, I went to the post office in the morning, and the gym in the early evening. Tuesday, I went to Target and found some workout clothes on sale. Today, I went to the gym and will soon be leaving for the airport once again to welcome Andrew home. In my forays into the world, I’m pretty certain that I did nothing to offend anyone. I did see more than one person in Target who seemed to be muttering aggressively, but I’m 99.9% sure it wasn’t me. I was friendly to the post office clerk. I exchanged a few friendly words with a worker at the gym. Tonight I exchanged a few friendly words with our downstairs neighbor, who had taken a package for me while I wasn’t home (I’m even missing mail deliveries now!). Why stop there? In ten days—ten days!—I’ll be leaving the house more dr...

So, let’s talk about last week. I set a dubious new record. With the exception of Wednesday, when I went to the gym for an hour, I did not leave the house once from Monday through Friday. Not once. I descended the stairs and opened the front door to retrieve the newspaper (8am) and the mail (5:30pm), but otherwise I was in our apartment. This is not good. I didn’t intend to sequester myself this way. Monday and Tuesday were blurs of TV-watching, understandably, but I still could have made time to at least go for a walk around the block, just to get some fresh air. I have tons of work right now (never something a freelancer can complain about, much as she might want to), but still, there was time for a quick walk or a drive to the grocery store. By the time Friday rolled around and it occurred to me that I hadn’t left the house, it was too late to do anything about it other than feel a bit alarmed. This must change. I need to make a concerted effort to leave the house. That might seem l...

Waking up yesterday morning, I felt like we were on the verge of something--something great, something transformative; but the doubts and fears and anxieties all but swallowed up the hope. And then it really happened. Waking up today, the world felt new, hopeful, different. Reason has triumphed. A corner has been turned. This is a moment to remember.

...with a single nod to an Obama win, and a double nod to an Obama landslide. She seems to have some mavericky thoughts about the electoral map, predicting Obama losses in both Virginia and Florida. But I think she was simply enjoying our outsized reactions; she also persisted in claiming Californians would vote "yes" on the hideous prop 8 (to amend the CA constitution to prohibit gay marriage), but demurred once I rephrased the question a few times. Little jokester.

One year ago today, just around this time, Andrew and I were getting married at The Summit. I’ve always heard that the first year of marriage is the hardest, but for us it wasn’t hard for us at all—easy, in fact. Blissful, even. And now we’re one year in. We celebrated this weekend by going to Glen Ellen—and by enjoying a rare few days of rain. Not just drizzles—constant, hard downpours, the kind that has California drivers skittishly pumping their brakes and driving slowly on the highway. It was wonderful. The rain was still coming down when we reached the Sonoma plaza on Saturday afternoon, and we splashed our way to Murphy’s Irish Pub for lunch. Chilled and wet, I ordered a cup of hot tea; it felt like fall. After tasting some wines at the Valley of the Moon winery, we checked into the Jack London Lodge and turned on CNN. (It’d been a few hours.) We had dinner at The Fig Café, one of my very favorite restaurants in California. I had a delicious carrot fennel soup, followed by pot ro...