We are in country
After 29 hours door-to-door, we have arrived at the old homestead in Japan. Called a taxi at 3:00 a.m. Wednesday, got to the airport around 3:30ish. Amazingly, there was already a crowd at check in, so it’s a good thing we arrived a bit early. First leg of the journey was a 6:00 a.m. flight to Chicago. A three-hour layover turned into a four-hour layover, but we finally got on the next flight to Tokyo. A thirteen hour interminable ride across Canada, Alaska, Russia, the Sea of Okhotsk, across Hokkaido and down into central Japan. Some amazing views of mountains in eastern Russia.
Arrived in Tokyo about 2:30 p.m. local time Thursday. It took two hours to get through customs, immigration, re-check in, etc. Then another two hour wait for our final flight to Nagoya. Arriving there, we rented our car and finished the final one-hour drive into Tado-cho at 9:30 p.m. ・29.5 hours from when we left home. Ouch.
Some drinks, some snacks, catching up with Grandma and exchanging news , presents, and plans for the next two weeks, and we池e ready to hit the hay. Or the futon anyway. It was a rough day, but very happy to be here.
Friday Morning
Got to bed about 11:00 p.m. Slept on thin futons on the tatami floor. Not as uncomfortable as it sounds. I slept soundly, but at 4:00 a.m. I woke up and realized that was it for me. I rolled over and Miranda asked me what time it was. She was wide awake too. Within seconds we noticed that Kris was up too. Lounged around for a bit and when I noticed dawn was breaking, I geared up and went out for a run. That was about 5:00 a.m.
I had a vague idea of where I wanted to go. I figured if I could take the back roads south to the main highway, I could come back to the house via the route I was familiar with. While I didn’t quite get lost, I never made it to the highway either. I wound up in a loop around mile three that took me back to the main road I’d been on. At that point I decided to turn back. Things started looking a bit unfamiliar, so I turned on the map feature of my Garmin 305 and verified I was on the correct route back. In fact, that even helped me find a shortcut back. Total was 6 miles at a decent pace of 9:15/mi. Decent especially considering it wound up being a pretty hilly route – we are in the foothills of a mountain range, so there’s not much chance of avoiding hills. I had to stop and walk briefly 2-3 times to recover from hills.
It’s a very rural area, all rice fields, and bamboo and pine covered slopes. No sidewalks to speak of, and and 18-inch deep runoff channels on each side of most roads. Had to be really careful with oncoming traffic. One wrong step to avoid a car and you face a near certain broken ankle. At one point where I stopped to let some trucks go by, I looked down and saw a bunch of stuff on the side of the road – a lighter, some pens, some baggies with nuts and bolts in them, and a couple handfuls of coins. I quickly scooped up the coins, not realizing until I got back that they were mostly tokens of some kind – probably for pachinko or video games or something.
The rurality gave way to an industrial area filled with factories around the area where I turned back. There were no other runners out, but a few factory workers were getting off of the night shift and heading back to their cars. And encountered one guy on a bike, probably heading to work. I gave a few cheery “Ohayou Gozaimasu”s, but mostly I think people were wondering who this crazy gaijin out running at dawn was.
The plan for the rest of today is to drive back to Nagoya to do some shopping. Not sure why we’re going all the way there, but apparently there are some places Miranda wants to go there.
