The lovers...the dreamers...and meee

I spent a fantastic weekend down south. It started with a night bus that leaves Koriyama at about 1 am and arrives in Tokyo around 5 am. (The next time I do that,I'm going to the fish market.) From Tokyo I took a train out to Yokohama where I was to meet up with Frank and later, some people we went to Geos training with. I love that there are always lockers at the stations. I stuffed all of my crap in one and went looking for breakfast. I found a little cafe at the station, took my tray and tongs and promply picked me a raison rock candy roll, hoping there wouldn't be huge squeeze of mayonnaise inside trying to pass for custard. You just never know what's inside *anything* and I've had some rude awakenings. Happily, it was just bread, raisons and sugar the size of boulders. yummmmy. The counter person looked at me and asked "What would you like?" Not expecting to hear English, I just looked at him. Looked at the menu. "What do you want?" as if he had a line behind me. I felt right at home!! I quickly ordered some coffee (which I've been drinking black these days for some reason) and got out of his way. Did BART extend it's services?

Frank met me about an hour later and he was feeling a little more hungry than me, so off we went. Yes, to McDonalds. Sometimes you're just not in the mood to guess what's in the food you just spent $7.00 on. I went to freshen up and met a woman at the door, as we often do. I said "Sumimasen". She said "Excuse me." Where the hell am I??? I came out looking for Frank and I swear, I thought a shooting has occured. It was, apparently, naptime at McDonalds. I passed at least 10 tables where people had their foreheads on their desks and the silence was eerie. Frank said it was even worse upstairs. I guess it's a popular place after a night on the town. After Frank had finished his predictable breakfast, we went exploring.

I think it's natural to compare new places with places we've been to in the past. Eventhough, of course, they can't be *that* similar. In this case, I would compare to Yokohama to Portland. There were a lot of green bridges, that looked to me like draw bridges, lots of water running through the city, it's a port city, and that day the sky was grey and rainy. The difference was that many of the bridges were for pedestrians. You went up and over if you wanted to cross a street...or many streets. It was very cool. We happened upon a bookstore with sale on foreign books. Little did we know we would spend 2 hours there! They had a really great selection!! And a whole wall of books and materials for English teachers. I came away with a Michael Moore book and 4 decks of vocabulary cards for my kids. Frank bought a history of Japan book and some business english for accounting. It was so much fun just to be able to browse!! They had pop-culture picture books and I promptly stuck my nose in Sex and the City. Frank went for 24. We were stuffing our minds with gummy bears, suckers, chocolates and sour sweets. Willy Wonka was about to sing any minute!!

After our binge, we just started walking and talking. It's a beautiful city and I was so happy to be there with Frank. We walked a pretty long way, I had my eye out for a bicycle museum I had read about, but we never found it. Truth be told, we weren't looking that hard, but I think it would have been cool. The sun came out and we found an outdoor plaza with many shops and strollers. I had a mandorin orange fruit popcicle and we walked. A rather old gent rode by on his bicycle. He had a squirl on his shoulder. Later we walked by him and he had him on a leash. I'll upload a picture of him so you can see. After our stroll, we decided to go to the oh-so-famous Yokohama China Town. It was crowded. It was a pretty impressive Chinatown though. It covered at least 4 major intersections and each corner you turned on was just as busy as the one you turned from. Some of it was just chinsy, but there were some kitchen and tea shops I would have spent more time in. There was a museum I had my doubts about. We had an overpriced chinese lunch and decided to head back to the train station. The people we were going to meet were going to be a little late. The last train out was at about 7:00, so we decided to go home instead. On our way back, we walked through the baseball stadium where there were huge pictures of some known player swinging a light-saber. If that's not testimate that Star Wars will live forever, I don't know what is.

The first time I went to visit Frank, he didn't know I was coming. It was a suprise for his birthday in March. It was my first venture on the trains and I made many many mistakes. The first being, I took the train. I had 5-6 transfers in about 4 hours, which is no big deal if you can READ. Trying to find the next train before it leaves is always a little stressful, even now. Anyway, I remember getting to Kozu. It was the last stop before Gotemba and it was the first time I had seen the ocean since I was in Japan. Just a hint of blue through the window. It was a moment of peace in that hellacious morning.

From Yokohama we had to transfer in Kozu to get to Gotemba. The train was sitting at the platform and instinct has us both running for it. The woman we ran past started running too. The three of us made it! ...with about 15 minutes to spare. So we sat, and I told Frank about that awful morning before I suprised him. He looked out the window and asked, "do you want to go down there?" It was just beginning to look like dusk. So, we got off the train (I'm sure the woman was puzzled by our desire to leave a train we had worked so hard to catch. She was still panting a little.) We put our load in a locker, grabbed another popcicle and headed to the beach. The popcicles here are really great. Most are the standard rectangular shape and seem like they would be everything they are in America. But, always be prepared. Japanese people like to make the inside of food a little special. When you bite into a popcicle (if you're into that sort of thing) you'll see that the outside is just a shell, about a 1/4 of an inch thick. Inside is this perfect, soft shaved ice (thankfully with the same flavor as the shell). Imagine the best snow cone you've ever had surrounded by a popcicle shell. It's pretty neat.

Kozu is a pretty sleepy beach town. The beach itself is rather polluted. I'm glad most things come in plastic and not glass, but I was truly sad that there was so much litter. What are people thinking? I don't get it. Still, there was a bit of sun just down the way a bit and we decided to go sit in it. We walked on the loose rocks, past the fishermen, past children cooking sand pancakes and to a sunny spot to sit. It was really very nice. Just to sit. I don't remember what I was thinking about. Mostly it was just a sweet moment for the two of us.

We headed back to the station, all the way looking for a trashcan for our wrappers and sticks. We didn't find one. I guess that explains...something, but I wouldn't call it an excuse. We got home and I checked my email. Frank drew me a bath and a cold drink. I felt so loved and cared for. I did the same for him, accompanied by a few great songs playing on the mac. We curled up and ended a great day.