Japan: My 1st Day

A red-eye flight delivers me to Tokyo's Narita airport at 8:00 AM on Saturday, January 11, 2014. I managed 3-4 hours sleep during the six hour flight, waking up about 3 minutes before I would've missed seeing Mt. Fuji. As luck would have it, I glanced out the window and there was Mt. Fujisan in all her glory, rising high above the clouds so I could see her snow-laden cap off in the distance. I snap a bunch of photos and am in awe that I saw it because it's such an iconic mountain that I was well aware of and I thank my lucky stars that I was sitting on the proper side of the airplane.

There appears to be no one at the Narita airport. My first stop is the bathroom and I smile as I see my first Japanese toilet with a myriad of buttons that will spray your butt with water and even play you music if you choose that button. It is very, very quiet. There is a man watching over the baggage carousel whose job it is to turn the luggage pieces upright. This is my first clue that things are more prim and proper than what I am used to. Customs and Immigration takes about 5 minutes or less. I walk through an area that warns me that my body temperature is being scanned. The officer electronic fingerprints me and scans my iris'.

Tsu, Mamoru, Junko and Yoko are at arrivals waiting for me.

I met Mitsuru (Tsu) or (Mitusursan) in 1989 or '90 here in Vancouver. My cousin was dating a Japanese fellow (Tomo) at the time, and Tsu had been invited to Vancouver by his friend Tomo. Tsu and I became friends way back then as he spent weeks in Vancouver. He came back to visit periodically over the years, sometimes sleeping on my living room floor, and we always stayed in touch even if a few years would go by between phone calls.

In about 1993, Tsu came for another visit to Vancouver and he brought along his friend Mamoru. Mamoru had only been out of Japan once previously and that was to honeymoon in Hawaii about 10 years earlier. I remember that particular visit so very well. Mamoru didn't speak more than about 3 words of English but interestingly enough there was a connection between he and I. We became fast friends as they stayed with me for about a week or 10 days. The day before they were to return to Japan, Mamoru sat on the floor at my coffee table and with his dictionary in hand he was writing on a piece of paper. That evening at dinner he asked if he could read something. He read out what he had been writing. I don't recall everything he said but I do recall him expressing how much it meant to him to be able to come to Canada and to meet me and that he hoped we would see one another again one day. As Mamoru was reading his writings I started to cry, then Mamoru starts to get emotional. We couldn't finish our dinner as emotions were over-flowing knowing tomorrow was going to be "goodbye" and it may very well be that we would never see one another again.

Tsu returned to Vancouver a few times since then and he and I continued to be in touch every few years by telephone. For years Tsu had extended an invitation for me to visit Japan. I never thought I would be able to afford it but always knew in my mind that the invitation was sincere should I ever get the opportunity.

Mamoru and I only spoke on the phone once or twice over these 20 years (his English had improved immensely) but we exchanged emails from time-to-time, I using a Japanese to English translation program on my PC. Mamoru became the quasi-secretary between Tsu and I. Tsu and I didn't email so if I couldn't get in touch with Tsu on the phone (such as after the horrific Tsunami 3 years ago), I would email Mamoru and he would ensure Tsu got the message and then usually within a couple of days Tsu would be ringing my phone. So despite the fact that we didn't spend hours communicating over the years there was always a bond that kept me attached to these two men from across the sea.

When I was researching my flight to Thailand I was very happy to see that a flight change in Narita was an option. What a perfect opportunity to finally visit Japan without the hefty plane fare. I tried calling Tsu for weeks but couldn't get through (eventually realizing I had one too many digits in the long string of numbers), so I wrote him a snail mail letter last summer telling him that I was coming to Japan to visit. For the past months we had been confirming and reconfirming my exact plans for arrival.

Mamoru is married to Junko and they have two daughters: Emiko who is almost 30-years-old and Yoko who is 26. Despite Mamoru and I having only met once previously, ten years ago Emiko came to Vancouver and stayed with me for three weeks. I had never met Junko and Yoko until the Narita airport.

After hugs all around we get in two vehicles and drive about an hour towards Abiko City where they live. It's sort of like a sleepy bedroom community of Tokyo. The drive is surprising to me because the roads are very, very quiet for 9:00 AM. They want to eat breakfast. I'm not hungry because Bangkok Airways fed us twice on that six hour flight. We go to CoCos and this is my first look at what a Japanese breakfast looks like. Hmmm... definitely not what we would eat in North America. They are eating rice; green vegetables; soup; eggs, and, of course, green tea (no coffee). We part ways after breakfast, the Takatori's go home and Tsu and I go to his house.

Tsu parks his car in a small parking lot that holds about six cars. We walk less than 1/2 block to his house. Tsu introduces me to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Tsugawa. What a pleasure to meet them! Tsu carries my luggage upstairs to what will be my bedroom for the next week. The floor is wall-to-wall tatami mats with a wooden wardrobe that covers the length of a wall. There is no closet in the room. Mrs. Tsugawa brings in two futon mattresses and we proceed to make my "bed". The narrow mattresses, an electric mattress pad cover; sheet and two very warm comforters. These futons are not similar to the futons we are familiar with in Canada. The Japanese futons are much lighter. 

Tsu shows me around the two floors of their home and we relax at the kitchen table and enjoy some green tea. Within a few hours the red-eye flight has caught up with me and I have a two-hour nap.

In the afternoon Mrs. Tsugawa appears with a brown paper package. She unwraps a kimono from the paper and starts to dress me in the kimono. I have never seen a kimono up close like that. What an absolutely beautiful outfit. It has many pieces to it and it takes about 10 minutes for her to have me fitted into the kimono perfectly, as she pulls at the fabric, tightens the "belt" just so, and puts on the "back-pack" thing that completely finishes the ensemble. Mrs. Tsugawa holds a certification which allows her to teach women how to properly wear a kimono. It's quite the sequence of pieces to put on and I suspect it would be very difficult to puts parts of it on properly without some assistance. Mr. Tsugawa and Tsu take photos of me and I am loving having photos of myself in this beautiful blue kimono. I watch the process of Mrs. Tsugawa folding the kimono and wrapping it back up in the brown paper. What a lot of work.

The four of us go out for dinner to a sushi restaurant about a 5-10 minute drive from home. We sit at the sushi bar that has a conveyor belt system. I like the ambiance of this busy restaurant with three or four sushi chefs behind the counter, swiftly making sushi and other Japanese dishes and putting them on the conveyor belt. Tsu is picking off dishes of food: raw fish; salad; rice. We make our own green tea using the tea powder that is in a small container and the ever-flowing hot water faucet that is at every sitting area. The cost of the meal is ascertained by the colour and design of the little empty dishes that are now in front of us. The "waitress: uses a scanner and literally scans the plates in one swipe from top to bottom and the scanner totals up the cost of all those different plates. I'd never seen anything like that before. Very quick way to tally up the final bill.

Tsu and I go to the 24/hour grocery store. I buy a box of ginger tea, two packages of hard candy and two packages of cough candies for 824 Yen. That's about $8.00 Cdn. The grocery store is very nice and neat with a very heavy emphasis on fresh fish and vegetables. I spot a bottle of Yellow Tail wine and it is 820 Yen. That is about 50% cheaper than it costs in Canada.

I head to bed before 10:00 PM. Need to turn on the heating pad for sure as it is very crispy upstairs. The house is heated room-by-room with kerosene heaters. There is a heater in the kitchen and one in the TV sitting room on the main floor. There is no heater in my room but there is an air conditioner/heater blowing warmish air.

The upstairs where I sleep is very chilly. There is no hot water upstairs. The tap only runs very cold water. The toilet is in a separate room all by itself, the sink is separate. The one very nice surprise though is the toilet seat is heated! Oh yes it is! What a treat for a very chilly room with a tile floor. Tsu quickly showed me the Japanese toilet with about 10 buttons that spray water in whatever bodily crevice you could want. I had heard about these toilets but had never seen one. Interesting. I use the toilet but forgo the fancy water sprays. I give it a flush and there is a small sink behind the toilet and as soon as I flush, a tap the size of a water filter starts to dispense water. You don't wash your hands in that sink, it's purpose is to assist in the flushing of the toilet. It continues to run by the time I'm ready to exit the toilet room so I tell Tsu the tap is still running. He assures me it will shut off on it's own.

I crawl onto my futon falling asleep in about one minute.