Sayonara, Jo-Lo in Tokyo

The big departure is tomorrow morning. By 6:30 am I will board the familiar Narita Express headed for a not-so-familiar continent, country, and life. Along with many farewells I have already bid, I must also say sayonara to this blog site, as I will no longer be "Jo-Lo in Tokyo." I will be making a page on this site, entitled "EngRish GiRL"-- because that's what I feel I'll be-- not quite a proper ENGLISH girl, bringing a bit of Japan with me. Give me a few days to set up the site, but it will be

www.EngRishGiRL.blogspot.com.

Until then,

Sayonara to

Akasaka, my new home in Tokyo, and all the ojisan I pass on my frantic dash to one place or another

My mama-chari, the best purchase I ever made in Tokyo. 5000 yen (45 USD), which paid for itself 100 times over in saved train fares, minutes on crowded trains, and commutes to the office

Squinting at the sharp sunlight after all nighters in Roppongi & Shibuya, drinking, dancing, and singing at karaoke until dawn

The wind against my face and an excuse to hang on tightly to S as we "scooter" around the city

Thursday nights at Andy's with the freshest, most delicious fish and the best company

Free time on the weekends to brunch, to explore the nooks and crannies of Tokyo, or to relax in a rotemburo shaded by a momiji at dusk

Automatic taxi doors, heated toilet seats, all you could want vending machines, onigiri & bento

Meeting someone for the first time and answering the questions, "where are you from?" "how long have you been in Japan?" "Nihongo jyouzu! why can you speak Japanese?"

Finding all the right sized clothes at too expensive a price

And much, much more.

I'll leave you with a quote that's followed me from my high school graduation (actually included it in my speech) through every big change in my life, and from country to country.

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." ~Dr. Seuss

SAYONARA

The weekend was dominated by my Thursday night sayonara dinner & paa-tee, as it took me almost the rest of the entire weekend to recover from this 11 hour soiree. It wasn't such an unusual night after all, but I thought it best to end on a night of familiarity. Thanks to Mx, the party started with a small and lovely dinner at Kaikaya, one of the best fish eateries in town. The night was accented by a bit of fashion, thanks to Matt-o, who titled himself the night's comedian by literally bringing his "party hat." Level of drunkenness: 6.

Next stop was Ruby Room, where more friends joined us, and where too many weirdo Frenchy guys (apart from those in our own party) tried to put the moves on us. But the house was good, the drinks were aplenty, and the night passed on even more quickly. Level of drunkenness: 7.5, the increase reflected by S' not-so-graceful full on fall down the hard wooden steps coming down from the club. The half of our party at the bottom of the stairs burst into "glad it wasn't one of us" laughter at the drunken spectacle... until they realized, "OH NO, it was SAM." Then the laughing got louder! I was coming down behind him and scooped up his broken body from the bottom step... :-) hehe. (See pic of S brushing himself off) Still makes me laugh even now.

The bar hop continued on to Red Bar, the small hole in the wall adorned in red, red, red everywhere, including my face by that point. And, in true Tokyo fashion, the night ended in SHIDAX, karaoke mecca of Shibuya. Level of drunkenness: doesn't even matter, we can't count! And we sang (or shouted? fell off our chairs? took funny pictures?) until 6am, when the place thankfully kicked our butts out.

I doubt I need much more explanation as to why the rest of the weekend ended up in stomach misery 15 minutes after anything I ingested. But it was a superb finish!! A HUGE arigato to everyone who came out to help me celebrate, despite their jobs, friends visiting, early trains and planes the next morning. xoxo

A Last Weekend of Firsts

As luck would have it, my two last weekends in Tokyo include national holidays and are 3-day weekends. This means more time to spend out and about with S enjoying the little time we have before my imminent departure to the dark, cold and rainy side. For once, we successfully limited the all-night parties and subsequent hangovers and saw sunlight from outside the apartment windows.

Saturday, we set off for Mt. Takao on a nice sunset hike. Autumn in Japan has "officially" begun (meaning the date deemed "end of summer" and "beginning of autumn" has passed), and though we are sure to be sweating out another few weeks of humid Japanese summer, the weather was surprisingly fresh and cool. We dodged some spider webs and fallen trees along the way and made it to the top just in time to see a lovely sunset peek through the trees.

After, S treated me to an amazing Japanese dinner in one of the nicest settings I've seen in Japan. Ukai Toriyama was the restaurant, set in a huge, breathtaking Japanese garden complete with turning water wheels and the scent of yakitori wafting from a small pagoda opposite a traditional goldfish pond. Anyway, the photos can explain better than I can.

Sunday was even more fun I must say, especially since our inability to wake up and start the day for once didn't seem to shorten the time we had to accomplish everything we wanted. We started with a picnic and Japanese macha tea at Hamarikyu garden and then continued on to Odaiba, which I had perhaps unfairly prejudged the archetype of Japanese tackiness-- another sad product of bubble redevelopment. To my surprise, however, I can see how Odaiba has become the prime dating destination for young people. You can sit along the (man-made) beach and watch the boats sail the harbor at sunset, and if you sit long enough, you eventually see the harbor amidst the lights of the distant skyscrapers and scarlet lanterns on the water. At that point, it is easier to forget the reconstructed Statue of Liberty looming behind you. We finished the night atop one of the highest ferris wheels in the world (If you can't beat the corny Japanese couples, you might as well join them!), which was especially fun for S since it was his first time on a "fairy wheel," as he calls it (apparently "ferris" is difficult for a Frenchy to remember).

A perfect day, really, ended with pizza, ice cream, a tummy ache, and a highly recommended DVD -- think the artistic directing and lovely innocence of "Amelie" combined with a war movie-- in my opinion, it can't get better than that!

Every weekend should be so lovely...

Black Beauty... ?

This is me seducing the camera. No, really, I just wanted to see if you notice anything different about me....

HINT: I just finished a FIVE hour session at the hair salon! There is something very wrong when you arrive for your 12:30pm appointment and leave when it's almost dark outside! God, what a process! But it is the last (for a while) of my Japanese beauty experiences and thus had to go out with a bang.

I blogged once upon a time about the Japanese hair salon experience, though since then, I think prices have gone up and my patience has gone down. But anyway, since I am unemployed at the moment, I didn't really mind the day-long washing, drying, doting, sipping tea, reading ELLE, getting "massaji-ed," and making small talk, especially since I was pretty much satisfied with the outcome... (have you noticed anything different yet?)

In addition to the straight perm, an annual must for my wild mane, I went black! Really black. Blacker than I intended (though maybe you can't tell in the photo). Perhaps it was premature-- I feel a bit wintery now... but I've been thinking about doing it for a while, so why not now when my life is taking a new course? Anyway, what do you think?

The faces of Tibet

Stunning. That's all I can say to describe not only the Tibetan landscape, but the people as well. If some of these children had been raised in the West, they would be on TV modeling. Dark skin, rosy cheeks, high cheekbones, gorgeous smiles, and black, thick hair. The only problem is that by the time they reach age 30, they look double their age. I wonder how people so poor can live so happily, or at least appear to, while we often have so much yet think it's never enough. But I guess it depends on what you are exposed to. If you never had chocolate, you would never miss it, right? I guess it goes the same for flushable toilets, electricity, and clean water. Anyway, during the time I spent with those kids, I never missed any of those small conveniences either.

The kids were bundles of energy and wanted to play constantly! We gave them all the piggy-back rides we could-- I strategically chose the smallest one [above] to be my friend, and also in the pic is her big sister, and "the [Swedish] dad" ;-) . After that we hokey-pokeyed and played games with them until the sun went down. It took every ounce of resistance not to stash my little one in my bag and bring a big omiyage home to S. Perhaps we were even sadder to then say good-bye than they were. I think they all brought out the best in us. There I was running down steep mountains with a 4 year old on my back, but smiling like it was the easiest thing in the world. Another little girl got kicked in the mouth during a game, and J. and I wiped her tears away until she stopped crying. It's these little moments that really stick in your heart as well as your mind. I just hope that they too were touched in some way by us, too.

I digress

Ok, so I've already reneged on my "blogger penance," but I had a very good excuse.

T-pan was visiting me for a week, and we were having wild & crazy times, which left me sick and hungover for most of the weekend... however, extremely worthwhile! T-pan was my original partner in crime from the very first of my days in Japan-- back in Nagoya when we were both poor university students living with host families and going through the ups and downs of Japan together. How far we have come!

Here we are embracing Tokyo with open arms...


And then embracing champagne and, ahem, Miles (we are giving him birthday kisses for the big 2-5 ;-) !

We also embraced such things as karaoke with two crooning Frenchies, so much shabu shabu I never want to smell let alone consume it ever again, a psychotic and aggressive heroine addict, matching "Gallant" tank tops, and more ice cream than my jeans care to allow.

Back to the China stories next time, but needed to give proper credit to a stellar week in Tokyo!

The Great Wall

Step by step by step... that is how I saw the Great Wall. The place was Simatai, which I highly recommend for the best of Great Wall experiences. If you've gone all the way to Beijing, you might as well get the best view of this magnificent site. At Simatai, apart from the poor farm wives who follow you every step of the climb to sell postcards, t-shirts, or even to lend a helping hand, we were the only ones there! And if there is any site in China that is best seen without the other 1.2 bil, one is most definitely the Great Wall.

When I think of my experience, one of the first things that comes to mind is extreme, mind-boggling, melting HEAT! We hit Beijing during a record setting heat wave, and those steps looked less and less friendly with every breeze that failed to blow. Good thing my buns of steel were up for the challenge.. haha.

It is not cliche to say the Great Wall is one of the great man-made wonders. It is INCREDIBLE! And even better, it isn't even necessary for your jello-jiggly legs to take you all the way to the bottom after the climb up. A zipline was kindly provided for the lazier, though more adventurous spirits in the bunch, to aid our return. Only the two crazy Swedes and I opted to take part in this "at your own risk" activity, and I just can't seem to imagine why, being that the pulley had turned a rusty brown, and the rope could have probably snapped at a sneeze. But if you can't trust the Chinese, who can you trust (!!??) .... The sheer feeling of freedom while flying from the Great Wall with legs dangling over a lake.... the sense of awe while looking back on the great wonder behind you... soooo worth 35 RMB (about 4 USD) ! I heart China!

Post-China Reflections

<----- Me against the mountains.... hehe.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the time or the will to blog throughout my trip, and a summary at this point is virtually impossible. I will let you skim through these photos for a travelogue of the places I went and the things I saw, and to make up for my extremely lazy blogging habits, I will write a post about a highlight of my travels everyday for the next week -- I'm sure it won't be too hard to think of 7 good ones :-) Consider that my penance.

To kick it off, though, I just want to make note here of some thoughts about my life in general after this experience, which I would say was probably at least mildly life-altering for me. After all, the ancient mountains of China and the mystical plateau of Tibet were a mere backdrop for the many experiences I had, which are the essence of what I will carry with me from this trip.

I'll first say that this trip was exactly what I needed at just the right time. I don't think I've felt so much like myself in a very long time as during the past month. Being totally alone and meeting for the first time a group of people with whom I would be spending immense amounts of time with, there was no other way to be but 100% Jo-Lo. And there is not a more liberating feeling than to escape for a while from a society, which, to put it harshly, is stifling at times.

What augmented the fabulousness of freedom was the opportunity to share it with some of the most amazing people ever. I made three friends I will probably be in touch with for a very long time, if not a lifetime, and will sincerely miss every other single person in our group of 12. Everyone was going through some sort of transition in life and was taking this trip purely as an opportunity to see the world and experience a different side of life than the usual. It was the type of experience that you put 100% into, with no hesitations and no holding back, because everyone knew that the chances of it ever happening again were slim to none. I will remember these people when I remember any place or time on this trip.

Finally, I also have a new, or revised, outlook on my looming future in Cambridge. I've gone from being insecure and basically scared out of my wits of going and leaving my comfortable life in Tokyo, to looking forward to another new chapter of my life. The Tokyo chapter will still be open for editing and many appendices I'm sure, but I've realized that there are times in life when it's necessary to let go and embrace something new. There are times when the change seems larger than what you care to handle, and there are people who you love so much you just can't say good-bye. But a boost of confidence makes everything a bit easier (though still not easy), and I guess now I can prepare myself for whatever Cambridge decides to throw at me.

So, this is what I've learned in China (and I swear I haven't teamed up with the Commies to recruit more tourists to visit)...