Our last full day in Tokyo was spent downtown because Amy had a meeting at Fulbright. This meant that I was in charge of the kids, which broke two cardinal rules of parenting; first, never be in charge and, second, if you find yourself in charge, never allow yourself to be outnumbered. Luckily, Lily was too tired to move anything other than her eyes, so she decided to spend the two hours reading in a corner while Amy's Fulbright contact told her what to do in the event of a tsunami. So that left me with Tessa, who immediately asserted that she "needed Starbucks." This proved to be an unforced error as a parent, as giving Tessa caffeine is like giving Adderall to a Jack Russell Terrier. I was able to bring her down through a sustained and severe embarrassment caused by my existence.
Then we went off to explore the city.
A few steps from Starbucks we found the stairs to a shrine.
I have no pictures of the shrine itself, as it is apparently embarrassing to take photos in public. Unless they are selfies of 13 year olds or pictures of "really hawt guys." My selfies do not fall into either category.
Tessa and I also skirted the parliament building, which is surround by ten foot barbed wire fences and signs ordering you not to take pictures of the parliament building. After an exhausting march around parliament that was no doubt surveilled by very bored Japanese special ops, we reunited with Amy and Lily. We experienced abject failure in finding a restaurant that served vegetarian food, so we returned to Daiba and ate snacks from 7 Eleven. We then spent the rest of the afternoon and evening exploring a flea market in a mall.
The next day we left for Nagoya!
Bullet train. The name says it all. But instead of five assassins, it's four Douglasses.
Buying tickets for the Shinkansen very nearly exceeded our resourcefulness and completely exceeded our language skills. Yet we were finally able to purchase tickets through a creative combination of repeating English words over and over again and full body pantomime. Then we rushed to the platform to see our train waiting.
It was there that we had our first international incident, when we had to politely confront two passengers who were sitting in our seats (9-D and 9-C). Amy assumed her firm tone that she uses with Murphy when he's wedged his bulk into the nether regions of the dishwasher. She prominently displaying her ticket, which clearly showed that she had seat 9-D, and said 'our seats.' Or something. I wasn't really listening, as I was developing an exit strategy in case things got rough. There was a confusing moment of cultural miscommunication during which the passengers spoke rapidly and repeatedly pointed to the time on the ticket (10:09). I was like yeah, 10:09 people. We got places to be.
The core problem is that we were on the 9:59 train. Now I'm sure all of you know that this would never have been a problem in America, where trains do not run every ten minutes. That would be insane. Luckily, I had been waiting to unleash a torrent of sumimasens (I'm sorry). A couple of those with an arigato thrown in and we were back on the platform waiting for the 10:09 train with crisis averted. As we boarded our train, part of me really wanted someone else to be in our seats. But it turned out that everyone else knew how to tell time.
Wait, I'm sitting next to dad??
We were able to see Mt. Fuji for about fifteen seconds as the bullet train bulleted by.
Then, suddenly, we were in our new home city. Nagoya.
This is Tessa stomping to the hotel. I can't remember why. It probably had something to do with me existing.
