“it loves you”

Jon reminded me today that I shouldn’t abandon the blog to work on other things. He says “it loves you. It just wants some love back.”
This is another reason I would not be a good Mommy. I forget about things.

Today I saw a child screaming… screaming, running after a woman and a stroller. The “mom”-woman was gaining distance and the little girls screams started sounding less and less like “fun game” and more like “mommy come back”. I wondered… was that woman running away from her child? Literally? Was she trying to abandon the girl in the middle of the park? And more importantly, did I fault her?

Anyways. I love you, teamEggers. I love that you’re dependable and don’t ask too much from me. My mom called me yesterday, as I was in the middle of what must have sounded like a quarter-life-crisis. Despite our glorious surroundings, which I keep forgetting to enjoy, I seem to be having a small mental breakdown over the past few weeks. I think things are on the upswing, and I resolve that March will be better.

So for you today, I bring a very happy tale of one girl who gets to stay in Japan.

Yesterday afternoon, I jumped on a train into the unexplored Burroughs of Yokohama.

• Final destination: The Japanese Immigration office.
• The task: An attempt to extend my 90-day tourist visa, so that I don’t have to leave the country in April.

After standing in various lines in a room that was set up similar to the DMV, lots of back and forth with a man named Ki-no-shi-ta, and the most charmingest smile I could muster, I was awarded a visa extension!

(I just had to buy a 40$ revenue stamp before they let me have it. Good thing I had some cash in my pocket!) Really though, $40 is a gift, considering that leaving the country to go to Hong Kong would have probably cost us close to $1500.

Happy, happy.

life, in boxes.

Hi Team! Michelle here, livin the hobo’s life – sleeping on a mattress in the middle of the floor, living out of boxes. Eating expired food.

What?

It turns out that a lot of our food is expired. Nearly everything that jon brought to the relationship, actually.
See, when we moved in to the house in Seattle together, he had a pantry full of things. Things, I am finding out this week, that expired two (sometimes three) years ago.

oh-seven? really jon? does that box really say “best before oh seven?!”. Jon, as nonchalant as ever just shrugs it off. “It’s a guideline, you see. I’m sure it’s still fine.“.

And THAT friends, is why we have stomachs of steel and can eat whatever we want in Japan. I’ve been in training since jon started going to the supermarket in college.

Meanwhile, I’ve got 7 short days left until I join jon in j-town. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to plan social-fun-things on 4 of those night. There are still people I want to see once more before we head out! There’s not enough time in the day! (Enter in Michelle’s addiction to Coffee and her opinion that we would certainly have saved the world by now if more people were as caffeinated as she is.)

Well kids, the Windex calls.

vehicle accidents.

A funny thing happened on the way home yesterday.

I was hit by a semi. In the car. The car…. was hit by a semi.
Everyone’s okay. It was just a fender-bender, but what the heck?

AND I found out jon’s plane was hit by lightening on his flight home from Japan. Why didn’t that come up before, jon?! He says it was no big deal and stuff like that happens frequently. *I’ve* never been on a plane that’s been hit by lightening. And furthermore, how did it take nearly a week to tell me? Wouldn’t you mention something like that when we have the standard “hi honey, how was your flight?” conversation. Sigh. Boys.

I suppose I am uncommunicative in other ways.

So back to the semi. We’re both sitting at a red light in south-downtown (1st and spokane), waiting to turn right, when the semi starts backing up. Now, I’ve never known cars to randomly back up at a stop light. I’ve never seen this. I didn’t know it was a possibility. On a hill, with a standard transmission, sure – there may be some rollback. But at flat red light, to physically put your car in reverse? No, I just didn’t know that was a possibility.

So the car doesn’t have any majour damage, though it will definitely need a new grill and perhaps a new front bumper. It’s unfortunate that a few deep scratches could cause an entire bumper to be replaced, but i suppose that’s the drawback to driving around in plastic cars.

In other news, we’ve been home for exactly one week now and life is officially back to normal. We’ve (just about) finished unpacking, jon’s going out to see Star Trek tonight with Kyle and Will, and I’m cooking dinner for some friends.

Actually, I’m looking forward to cooking dinner. It’s great to look through my recipes, find something with ingredients that I KNOW i can just go to the store and buy (you’d be surprised how hard it was to find things like cilantro in japan. it was there… sometimes. but let me tell you – it wasn’t called cilantro.) and cook in a kitchen with nice pans and sharp knives.

Working in the Future

Glad you asked. teamEggers is… working.

Mrs. teamEggers is rather grumpy about said arrangements, but I think she’s handling it rather gracefully. After all, actually working 6pm-7am, 7 days a week, sucks significantly more for Mr. teamEggers.
But you don’t see him complaining about it.

You may be wondering what *I’m* doing in my now jon-less time. I haven’t been terribly inspired to conquer new territories alone, so I spend my nights quietly. Having exhausted my supply of Murakami books, I’ve taken to reading trashy novels and drinking wine at the Spanish bar we recently found.

I’m also working on a coffee table book with the photos from our trip. I expect it to be around 100 pages long – 11×13.

Rereading all of our blog posts from the past four months has been really interesting. I look back at the posts from January and can honestly say I’ve learned some things about this crazy country. I no longer leave the house in well-disguised-terror and I can accurately tell the difference between a shrine and a temple.

My goal is to finish the book before May and send it off to print a week before we leave. I would really love it if we had it right away to show everyone when we got back.

In 1999 we were still developing film and showing off our photo albums. In 2009 we’re actually publishing books with the help of software like iPhoto, WordbPress, and Blurb. I love the future.

(the picture up top are of the snail-statues outside our apartment)

Kyoto [part 1]

[Note: Similar to the 5-part Seoul trip, this was a big weekend. There's a lot of story to tell you about. I hope you don't mind.]

While it wasn’t a ryokan, we did manage to locate a hotel for Saturday night. You know how when you go to a hotel in America, and they charge you extra on top of the advertised rate when you have two people? That always drove me crazy. Over half of their rooms have to be taken by couples of some sort. Why wouldn’t you make your advertised price for TWO people and then offer a friendly “single traveler” discount? It’s all about framing in a positive way, you know?

I digress. In Japan, the room rate is often *doubled* for two people. I will never complain about that extra $10 in America again.

At 6am we loaded ourselves up on one of the fastest trains in the world, which has incredible amounts of legroom, sells whiskey and sandwiches, and travels 300 miles in 2 hours. With a book and an inclination to nap, it was not a terrible way to spend the morning.

I may have mentioned that this was supposed to be one of the most beautiful weekends in all of the year. The fleeting “sakura season” is approaching.

That is, unless you get an unexpected cold-weather front and none of the buds pop yet. The crazy thing about cherry trees is that they don’t unfold their leaves until after their blossoms, so before sakura season all you have is a bunch of barren sticks. This is what that scene REALLY looked like:

But you know, despite all odds, we still had a good time. Some background: In years before the democratization of Japan, a new capitol was established every time there was a new emperor. In the course of history, all of those cities have been destroyed by bombs or fire. All, except one.

Kyoto is the longest standing original capitol in the country. (Most others, like Tokyo for instance, had been rebuilt at some point in time.)  The city is rich with temples, shrines, and even a castle. The juxtaposition of old and new was even more jarring than usual.  But enough talking. Let’s get to the photos!

No trip in japan is complete without a “jon is too tall for this country” photo. By this point in the morning (it was like, 8:30am) he had hit his head about three times. I will now refer to him as “lumpy”.

Our first stop of the day was… under construction. What the hell, you know? For the record, they still charged full price to get in. This was the “silver temple”, though it was actually made entirely of wood. (There were unfulfilled plans for it to be covered in silver, to rival the “gold temple” which we’ll see tomorrow.) There’s also a sand sculpture to represent Mt. Fuji. There’s a lot of fuji-love. (for those of you in west allis, your sushi house called “fujiyama” is really named after “Mt. Fuji”! (yama = mountain))

As an architectural feature, there were circles everywhere in the city.

Near the gift shop of the silver temple, we found (what I think to be) one of the highlights of the trip. At first we thought what we found was a journal. After the woman behind the counter asked us if we wanted it signed for $3 more (Again, with the language barrier, we had no idea what we were getting. We generally say “yes” and hand over our money when something like this happens.) We realized that at every temple, there are little old men hired to record your travel in calligraphy. Each temple has a unique signature and set of stamps, and your page is recorded with the date. I thought it was great because it added another dimension to visiting temples. Now it’s temples… crazy-japanese-adventure-style.

Lumpy-Jon spent a lot of the day with his nose in a book, walking down pathways. He’s a great impromptu tour guide:

So we’re walking along this path called the “philosopher’s stroll” (named because it’s supposed to be so beautiful during cherry blossom season that it’s been said to have inspired some of the great philosophers of the time.) and we’re admiring the day and standing in line to pose for pictures in front of the few blossoming trees…

…and then tragedy struck. This was the last photo ever taken with our beautiful new camera, the cannon g9. That camera, just under 1 year old, has served us well. It’s taken many great photos, it’s sturdy, it’s portable. it’s a great camera. It wasn’t cheap.

And now its a paperweight. I know what you’re thinking. And you’re wrong. I did not drop the camera. This whole situation would be a lot easier to cope with had I taken some part in the malfunction of the camera.

So that’s a good spot to end part 1. Continue on for a visually barren look at part 2.