Back to Tokyo

The thing about Tokyo is that there's not just one thing about Tokyo.  If you Google 'best 10 things to do in Tokyo,' you'll find warring posts from influencers with too much time on their hands writing snide comments to each other.  Some of the lists are helpful.  Some of them are just trolls trolling trolls.  

By contrast, if my daughters wrote the best 10 things to do in Tokyo, their lists would be eerily similar.

1. Lay in bed and watch tv
2. Lay in bed and watch tv
3. Lay in bed and watch tv
4. Lay in bed and watch tv
5. Lay in bed and watch tv
6. Humor dad by going to a shrine and complain until he brings us back
7. Lay in bed and watch tv
8. Lay in bed and watch tv
9. Pretend to sleep and watch tv under the covers
10. Eat breakfast

The infamous Douglass luck manifested early in this trip.  In watching the local weather announcements, we saw with horror that Japan was about to be struck by a 'storm of the century' that would cripple the infrastucture.  Given that we are from the Northeast (we are basically Starks), we took this warning seriously.  We thought about cancelling the trip.  We googled prepper sites for 'how to survive for a week when you are trapped in a Tokyo subway.'  I wrote a few people heartfelt goodbye texts.

Here is a picture of the storm of the century that shut down Tokyo.

In the bottom right there's a snowflake that melted instantly upon hitting the pavement.  Still, you know it was serious because a) it was a Friday in Tokyo and b) there were no people, no cars, and no dogs in trousers (it's a thing - blog post pending).  It felt a lot like The Living Dead: Tokyo Time.  Luckily, I'd also Googled 'how to survive in a Tokyo subway during a Zombie apocalypse' (though there was nothing on there I didn't already know).

While in Tokyo, Amy had a meeting with a colleague who has clearly never seen pictures of the US northeast in the winter and regarded this storm as the worst thing to hit Tokyo since Pokemon.  This colleague appeared gravely concerned about how she was going to get home.  Amy saw a stockpile of gatorade and saltines in her office right beside what looked like a home made spear.  Looks like somebody else subscribes to the zombietokyo reddit.

Enjoying Tokyo?

We had a late lunch at a conveyer belt sushi restaurant.  

I had a lot of sushi, as my stack of plates will attest.  Lily looked nauseous and had an edamame.  

It was only later that I learned her nausea was at least partly related to a Tik Tok prank in which teenage anarchists take a plate from the conveyor belt, lick the item, and put it back.  

Yet another of social media's contribution to society. 

Here I'm caught mid dad joke.

Tessa caught thinking it was funny.

By that night, Tokyo looked a lot like Gotham.

My brother, who has been frustrated by the complete lack of Godzilla in my posts, provided this rendering.

If anyone would like him to Godzilla your wedding photographs, I'm sure he would oblige for a modest fee.  

That night, the girls watched television while Amy and I went down to the hotel bar and listened to some jazz.

I had The Vesper.  

Watashi wa Bond.  James Bond.

I'm pretty sure the bartender got the joke.  But maybe not the one I intended.

To our daughters' horror, the next day we mandated leaving the comfort of the hotel and television and ventured out into one of the shopping districts.  Both daughters viewed this as a profound betrayal that was sadly typical of our failed "carpe diem" parenting philosophy (which they have since rebranded as "carpe puppis").  

After brekkie, we took the subway to Nakamise Dori and wandered in and out of shops (though with Amy's sense of direction it's possible that we wandered in and out of the same shop a few times).  Lily discovered that she does, in fact, like shopping and proceeded to have a manic episode in a purse store.  She left with a lot of purses and no money.

I also forced the family to see the Senso-ji temple.

Quick traveling tip for families - if you take pictures facing the sun, the squinting will make it look like you are all smiling.

The one place I'm never going to ask for directions.

Given our complex culinary needs, an Italian restaurant represents the best possible outcome for an early lunch.

In our last hours, we really wanted to find Harmonica Alley, which was described online as a lively warren of restaurants and bars lit by traditional Japanese red lanterns.  Google helpfully directed us to a dark alley that smelled like a sewer and had no restaurants or bars.  At one point, Amy cleared her throat and suggested that I head down the alley and see if the shape on the ground was a person and, if so, if that person was alive.

We retraced our steps and walked down street after street of an open air mall looking for an alley with red lanterns or a vegetarian restaurant that Happy Cow (Sad Soybean) told us was nearby.  To make matters worse, the vegetarian restaurant was sketchy and closed, the few places that were open appeared to be shutting down, and our internet provider suddenly decided that we had all abused the Fair Use Policy and was throttling us.  So by this point, we were lost, starving, and angry at Google but taking it out on each other.  This is what family therapists refer to as The Low Point and is, coincidentally, the least amount of fun for the odd person out in the gender game.  For those of you keeping score at home, that's me.  This is particularly true if you are the one who suggested traveling to Harmonica Alley.  If you've ever traveled with Amy when she's hungry you know it's like sitting on a fire-ant hill after bathing in honey.  A matter of seconds and you wish for death.  So in an effort to save our sanity and family, we randomly walked into a basement Indian restaurant.

Best decision ever (except for Lily - as her facial expression suggests, no decisions that day could even be called marginal).

Smile for the blog!

Exhausted and sated, we walked back to the train station and stumbled into the damn alley.

On the way home from a park

One of the most amazing aspects of Japan is finding something beautiful hidden in the mundane.  As we were walking home from a walk, we found this Buddhist temple tucked into a random neighborhood.  

This is a shot of the street leading up to the temple - you can see it at the far end. 

I'm not sure how the construction affects meditation. Maybe the monks try to time drum beats to the sound of the bulldozer hitting the ground.  Or maybe the occasional epithet from a construction worker rhymes with a mantra.

Hair katto

One of the moments I've been dreading arrived.  The inevitable haircut.  Prior to leaving, I was informed by all members of my family that I could not return to my undergrad, heavy metal days, when I looked a lot like a young Kevin Cronin.  Mostly because I would now look like an old Kevin Cronin trying to look like a young one.  So I knew at some point I would need to stumble my way through an interaction with a Japanese barber.

Part of my problem was the paradox of choice, as there appear to be two hair salons for every restaurant in Nagoya.  I honestly don't see how there is enough hair in the country to justify the number of salons.  One of the salons is on the way to our subway stop, and so every morning I would peer inside as I walked by in the hopes that one of the stylists might be free and, seeing my disheveled appearance, invite me inside for a quick cut.  After thinking about it a bit, I realized the stylists were probably bit freaked out to see a hairy American staring at them longingly every day, so I only stared every other day.

The other part of the problem is that most of these places require a reservation.  We do not have a Japanese phone number, so that meant going in and trying to schedule a reservation in person or getting an online reservation.  As perfect as the latter seemed, the online reservation system was a national online system.  Good luck finding the barber shop down the street.

After a few weeks of staring into barber shops and enduring Kevin Cronin jokes over dinner, I discovered a nearby 'walk-in and wait' barber shop with a wholesome name.  'Familys.'  The building had several pictures of gaijin plastered on the windows, all of them looking extremely happy with their selection of hair style.  I was sold.

Before taking the plunge, I did a bit of online research on 'how to get a haircut in Japan.'  The advice was great.  Find a picture of the haircut you want and display this prominently while saying 'shi o kono e no you ni mi se te kudasai' (make me look like this picture).  So, I found a good picture online and, the next Wednesday, I went in.  I was immediately ushered into a chair, and my barber rattled off a few Japanese phrases while holding a razor.  I panicked.  I forgot my phrase.  I resorted to the much easier 'hair katto' and brought up a picture of Chris Hemsworth while pointing to my head.  I can only describe the barber's expression as deeply skeptical.  To clarify my request, I pointed to my head again and said "Hai.  Thor.  Hair katto."  So, he shrugged and did his best to make me look like Thor.

The Japanese haircut is well beyond what you can get in Lewiston.  First, it is not just a haircut.  It's an experience.  After the haircut, the barber said 'shave?' and I thought, why not?!  So he lathered up my throat, chin, cheeks, neck and forehead.  He then helpfully clarified whether I would like my eyelids shorn (I declined).  After all facial hair had been eradicated, he inquired whether I would like a shampoo and a massage.  Why yes, I thought.  Yes I would.  So, after five minutes of scalp scrubbing, gel applying, and shoulder pummeling, I left the salon looking a lot more like Chris than Kevin.  And what more, really, could I ask.

Did someone say Thor reboot?

Kyoto Part II

The next morning, we took a family trip to the shrine.  And by 'family trip' I mean the same thing that most parents mean; namely, we wrenched our children out of bed a full five hours earlier than they would have preferred, forced them to fake their way through personal hygiene, and mandated they consume something other than refined sugar and flour covered by liquid refined sugar.   

We took a taxi to the shrine.  On the way there, the driver was quiet, he drove safely, and he dropped us off right in front of the shrine.  After we arrived, he pealed out of there as if suddenly realizing he violated a national ordinance related to Douglasses at holy places.  It's possible that the word got out about Lily's destructive tendencies at Awomb, because I did see some pretty nervous monks standing in front of breakable objects on our way in.

The Fushimi Inari Shrine gates.

The shrine has thousands of orange gates leading to the top of the mountain.  Many of the gates have beautiful inscriptions written on the sides that I assumed were haiku or philosophical mantras sadly inaccessible to us.  This assumption was proven wrong halfway up the hike, when we saw 'oral health' written in English.  This led me to conclude that most of the inscriptions are part public service announcement, part advertisement.  Bob's Car Wash.  Wash Your Hands.

The shrine is dedicated to Inari, the Shinto god of rice and unhappy children.  So I sort of assumed our kids would feel right at home and maybe, ironically, less unhappy.  But this was naive.

If you find the prospect of hiking up 2000 steps exhausting or the thought of three hours of non-stop complaining even more exhausting, imagine hiking those steps accompanied by a three hour concert of two thirteen-year-olds bemoaning their fate and talking wistfully about how good the kids have it in shrine-free Lewiston.

At a crossroads mid hike.  I'm not proud that I was sorely tempted to let my family get a few feet down the right lane and then run down the left.  Awkwardly, Amy had the same idea, so we all ended up going down the left.

Parents reading this blog will immediately recognize that the expression on our faces is not smiling, per se, but a form of rigor mortis that comes from gritting your teeth for too long due to a constant barrage of complaints.

Upon reading this section, Lily exclaimed "DAD!

I didn't complain.  And that's amazing because that whole day was like waterboarding."

How could I disagree?  The hike did have unremitting interrogation.  Why are we on this hike anyway?  How much longer is this going to take?  Daddy, I can hear Tessa breathe.  Can you make her stop?

So in retrospect, it was a lot like a group waterboarding, otherwise known as the Last Family Vacation.  Every family has one.  Ours is just going to last another 10 weeks. 

And the hike was not without risk ...

The idea of a roving band of bloodthirsty monkeys made the hike even less appealing to Tessa.  She spent the remainder of our time convinced that she would be abducted, and her movements became even more furtive and jumpy than usual.  At one point, we heard an odd shushing, sweeping sound (which later proved to be a groundskeeper sweeping the steps) and she squeezed my hand painfully and whispered "was that a monkey?"  

By contrast, I suspect Lily would have welcomed the prospect of being held hostage by monkeys.  Hey.  Better than a forced march on a Sunday morning.

The shrine was lousy with statues of foxes, or messengers of Inari.  Amy was primarily interested in the "bibs."  We've spent a lot more time than I thought possible speculating on what the bibs might mean, who put them there, and how often they are washed.  I have a lot of pictures of bibs.

Those questions represented the sum total of Amy's interest in the foxes.  She was on a quest to find a few statues of kama inu, or lion dogs.  These have proven surprisingly difficult to find.  Every time we entered a shop, Amy bustled to the back of the store and rummaged through the inevitable fox-centric statuary and finally, overwhelmed by frustration, she turned to the proprietor and shouted 'kama inu?  Inu!  Ka-ma I-nu?'  

Throttled

I have a few slogans for our cellphone company, which I'll call Locodomo because I'm paranoid that actually naming the company in a blogpost will result in something bad.

Here are my best slogans.

Locodomo.  Where internet users go to die (from old age as the page loads).

Locodomo.  Play throttle roulette.

Locodomo.  Want to surf the internet?  The tide is always out.

Locodomo.  UNLIMITED DATA (so long as you don't download anything bigger than 5 MB).

As you've probably surmised, I've been throttled.  The embarrassing thing is that I've been throttled repeatedly and I am the only one in the family who has been forced to tap out by Locodomo.  To be fair, I did not really read the fine print of the contract, which clearly stated (in 3 point font) that they can and will slow you down if you are what they call an excessive internet user that violates the fair use policy, or a 'whale.'  The exact definition of excessive internet use is left vague and ill defined.  I suspect it's left up to the whims of a temperamental Locodomo IT guy named Larry.

My first throttling occurred early in our stay, when I was preparing a blog post.  I uploaded a batch of 250 photos from my phone to my computer, somehow messed up the upload, and uploaded them again.  Possibly even a third time.  It was definitely an upload binge.  But what harm could there be in a few uploads?

2 GB in fifteen minutes?  Bam.  You are done.  Larry put the hammer down and for the next twenty four hours, I was forced to limp along on 160 kbps.  Many of you may be unaware that there is such a thing as Kbps.  I could hear the click and whine of the dial up modem as I stared at my blank screen.

My second throttling occurred after I realized I could watch NFL playoffs and really really wanted to watch the Giants lose.  Well, they won and the Bucs and Vikes lost.  Which brings us to yet another life lesson I'm happy to offer free of charge; streaming a high def NFL game to your laptop consumes an inordinate amount of bandwidth that will render your phone most effective as a coaster for drinks.

So that throttling was definitely not worth it.  Not that I'm necessarily saying a throttling should ever be worth it.

By this time, I successfully complained to a subsidiary of Locodomo about my unfair asphyxiation.  They seemed really sympathetic and sent me a second sim card to swap out in case Locodomo kept suffocating me.  They did warn me that "excessive downloads or uploads" would trigger continued virtual beatings.  I wrote 'hey I get it, I really do.'  I had learned my lesson.

But I didn't really learn my lesson.  I just acknowledged there was a lesson that one might learn.  The third throttling was clearly my fault.  I watched the 49ers lose on one card (and got throttled) and then swapped the sim card and watched the Chiefs win on the other card (and got throttled). 

Despite the throttling, my 160 kbps stream still allowed me to check email and read a webpage an hour.  But Larry must have been harboring a grudge, because after a few hours, I noticed that my speed was down even further.  8 kbps.  At this speed, a sentence of plain text can take a half hour to load.  I asked Amy if she thought double throttling was a thing.  She said 'it is now.'

I contacted our previously helpful subsidiary and noted two things; first, I was pretty sure I'd been Double Throttled and, second, 'Unlimited Internet' and 'Double Throttling' would seem to be mutually incompatible concepts.  The reply I received balanced the impressive politeness of Japan with the terse rigidity of a customer service agent pushed too far along with a dose of inexorable corporate illogic.  I was informed that there are no "true unlimited" internet plans in Japan, and that I'd better be happy with the current 'limited unlimited' plan.  

I responded that I was happy not happy with the plan.

I do not want a bag!

Amy is mastering Japanese one emphatic phrase at a time.  Her philosophy is that it's better to be able to say one thing with conviction than carry on a conversation with someone.  For a long time, her phrase was arigatou gozaimasu (spelling corrected by Lily).  This roughly translates to 'Thanks very much.'  She said it to everyone but me.

Lately, however, her focus shifted.  For the last several weeks, she has decided to master fukuro wa irimasen.  For the astute readers out there, it means 'I do not want a bag.'  It started out innocently enough, after we developed an escalating collection of plastic bags and could not dispose of them.  When we went to the local co-op, she'd say fukuro iie (bag no).  But lately it seems to be getting out of control.  As her self-confidence with bag negation has grown, she has decided to accompany me to stores in the off chance that someone will gesture to a bag so she can scream fukuro wa irimasen.  When the clerk backs off with a panicked expression, Amy's eyes get a little wild, a little glazed over, at the rush of endorphins that comes with having uttered a Japanese phrase in context.  Every time I get off the couch, she sits up and demands "you going to the store?  7 Eleven?  Co-op?  Bags R Us?"  

"Um no," I usually stammer.  "I'm going on an exercise walk" (to 7 Eleven).

In part, Amy's obsession with 'bag no' comes from our burgeoning awareness that the Japanese are oversackers.  I suspect that the bag lobby is extremely powerful here and may in fact have ties to the yakuza, because if you are not incredibly attentive every item you purchase at a store will be placed inside a bag which is then placed inside another bag.  At times, items are first placed in bubble wrap before being double sacked.  Sometimes, a sandwich purchase will also include a freeze pack to keep it cool and fresh, and all of that will end up wrapped in layers of plastic.  Your ecological karma takes a serious whack every time you go to a 7 eleven.  

I worry that Amy's habit may be hard to break; that when we return to Maine, she will compulsively yell fukuro wa irimasen while at Hannaford or during her Statistics lectures.  If this happens to you, just back away slowly, avoid eye contact, and keep your hands away from any nearby bags.

Kyoto Part I

 Kyoto.  The city in Japan you are most likely to have heard of besides Tokyo.  Although this is not the official slogan, I think it's pretty good and sums up our experience of the place.

In an effort to find food that Amy and Lily would appreciate, I discovered Awomb, a restaurant serving vegetarian sushi that had great reviews on our vegetarian restaurant finder, Happy Cow (also known as Supersad Soybean).  We asked our hotel to make a reservation for us, and learned that either a) it could only be done online or b) our hotel staff were deeply offended by the idea that they could be used to make reservations.  So I went up to our room and, after an agonizing hour of attempting to force Google Translate to translate Japanese websites, I made a reservation for the next day (though also possibly for several years in the future).

The restaurant had a very cool hobbit vibe, with a gate and a round lantern and a stone path ringed by trees that led to a half size door.  There were, unfortunately, no unusually attractive elves.

Upon reaching the door, I mustered by best Gandalf voice and said "Bilbo Baggins!"  

My next thought was that no one gets me and that no one wants to.

The hobbit door.  The average person's head is well above the lightbulb.

We removed our shoes and were asked to wear
sandals, which Lily found revolting.  Shared footwear is not something she or Amy can appreciate (in their minds, 'you could learn a lot from walking in someone else's shoes' translates to athletes foot).  Lily gagged as she thought about all the feet that had been in the sandals over the last month, and it probably didn't help when I remarked that some people probably don't wear socks when it's hot.  I risked a glance around the restaurant to make sure Lily's gagging didn't offend anyone.  "Keep it down," I whispered.  "You're ruining our first impression."  

She pointed out that my Gandalf impression already accomplished that.  

At that moment, the hostess handed me a large clipboard that held a laminated piece of paper on which a dissertation in Japanese had been written.  Depending on the accuracy of Google Translate, it was either suggested etiquette for customers or the top fifteen things that would get you banned from the restaurant.  After scanning the list, I realized there was a good chance my children were going to hit at least ten of the fifteen and Amy had another three covered.  As I was trying to think of a polite way to run out of the restaurant, Lily backed into the wall and bumped into a wooden decoration and sent it banging to the floor.  It was the kind of banging that kept on going, you know, bang bang bang BANG .... bang.  Bang.  Everyone in the restaurant turned to glare at Lily.  A few 'gaijins' were thrown her way, and I'm willing to admit that I was the one saying them.  (Because honestly.  How hard is it to enter a restaurant and avoid sending the nearby Ming dynasty vase to the tile floor in a million pieces?  As a Douglass?  Apparently impossible.)  Our hostess glared at me.  I cooly returned her gaze and tapped the clipboard and said 'not on the list.'  Or something pretty close to that.   She gave me the type of look you get from your garbage men when you tell them that you ran out of garbage bags and just spent a week throwing food scraps and dirty diapers in the garbage can.  Revolted and resigned.  Although they tried to be exhaustive, you just really can't anticipate the Douglasses. 

Then we started upstairs.  I took the lead, followed by Amy, Lily, and Tessa taking up the rear.  As I approached the top, I heard Lily mutter "oops," and turned around just in time to see one of her slippers tumble down the stairs, hitting every single stair with a loud bump.

After Lily retrieved her slipper, we were seated in a space as far away from other paying customers as possible.  I assume they considered seating us at another restaurant.

Our meal.  The intended process is that you take a piece of seaweed (upper right), roll it into a cone, stuff some rice into it (lower right), select one of the fillings, and then an optional topping (lower left).  Then you wash it down with mushroom soup (center right).

Although most of the food was excellent, one of the fillings was absolutely inedible and caused a group gagging (except for Lily, who essentially refused to eat anything).  Kudos to whoever figures out the offending filling.  Though again, those aren't the kudos you want.  But they've gotta be better than eating that thing on the upper right.  Blech.

After the meal, the girls engaged in a relentless campaign of commenting on a) how cold it was, b) how far they'd walked, and c) how difficult the transition to Japan had been for them.  This was all in service of being allowed to return to the hotel and lay in bed and watch Gilmore Girls or (insert other show) on their phones while eating junk food.  I'll only say that it was a very effective campaign.  I later learned that Tessa was unable to find another good show and defaulted to watching a 24 hour sumoathon.

Amy and I took the high road.  At least that's what I think it was called.  My Japanese is good not.  We took the metro to the Kyoto Botanical Gardens, where we were able to appreciate the 'dormant phase.'  I'm told this is a worthwhile expenditure of an afternoon by botanists and marital therapists.

Some pretty aggressive sculpture

Even more aggressive avian features.  The 'kite' seems to be a distant relative of the Australian magpie, which as you all know is the deadly psychopath that routinely ravages the Adelaide countryside and strikes fear into the hearts of umbrella carriers.  The kites are worse, as they are approximately the size of Rainbow Dash and have the temperament of Nightmare Rarity.  Those My Little Pony episodes dig deep into your psyche.  We should all hope the American crow doesn't learn from their cousins in the east.

As I stared at this sign, I kept returning to the idea of what kind of business this might be and what the owner might have requested from the graphic designer.  You could make an argument for fish massage, but the guy in the hat seems pretty happy.  I'm not great on fish facial expressions, but the fish not so much.

On the way back to the hotel, Amy and I wandered through the Nishiki Market, approximately four blocks of food stalls, tiny restaurants, and shops.  It was packed in the winter, so I can only imagine what it must be like at the height of the tourist season.

This was a matcha flavored rice paste snack.  I bought a ten pack.  It was voted everyone's least favorite snack.

That night, we found the best Mexican food I've ever had in the basement of an office complex.  Now most of you are probably turning to your partner or child or stranger sitting next to you saying 'he lives in freaking Lewiston, Maine.  What does he know about Mexican cuisine?'  

Well, I'll have you know that I've also had really good Mexican food when we lived in Australia.  

But this was better.

I obviously took this picture most of the way through the meal after realizing that a picture of the nacho tower might convince skeptics out there.

 

Two hoodlums lurking at the back.  I told Amy we should steer clear of them.  

Amy pointed out they were our children and I said 'exactly.'

Meito City Ward

"I'll just head on over to the Meito City Ward and take care of our registration cards."

If you ever find yourself saying anything remotely similar to this, you need to stop yourself.  You are about to make a mistake that your spouse will hold over your head for years.

Amy looked at me with the world-weary expression of someone who has heard many stupid things in her life and is assessing whether this might be the stupidest.  "What did you say?"  

"Registration cards.  I'll just head over and get them stamped.  Maybe they can tell me how to sort our trash."

You see, in my mind, I was about to head over to a small city office that had two windows and a bored clerk who would be happy to spend fifteen minutes explaining not only how to get our registration forms approved but how to sort our trash into the eight different piles required by the city.  In my fantasy, the clerk had a good command of English.  My plan was to 1) establish rapport, 2) use my well practiced but limited Japanese (Konnichiwa!), and 3) sign a form and perhaps receive a welcome package consisting of a small chocolate in the shape of a rabbit (it is the Year of the Rabbit after all).

But Nagoya is not Lewiston.  Nagoya is a city of three million.  So the small city office is not small.

As you might be able to tell from the picture, there are more than two windows and the only thing that remotely resembles English are numbers.  Also, in case you can't tell, none of the clerks look remotely interested in practicing their English or bantering with a forensic psychologist.  However, I've discovered that the benefit of looking desperate and hapless is that someone will eventually wander over and ask if you are in the right place.  And by place, I'm thinking she meant country.  The woman had a badge that we ultimately deduced meant 'information' or 'help for the stupid.'  She produced a required form that was completely in Japanese and, correctly assessing our looks of terror, she then brought an instructional guide in English.  After a painstaking process of learning how to spell our name in Katakana (one of the three alphabets) she shepherded us to window number four.  There another very nice woman managed to correct all of the mistakes we made on the form and provided us with a card.  Our number was 148.  The problem, and it seemed profound at the time, is that the numbers were read aloud over the loudspeaker in Japanese.  We were therefore trying to listen for 'hyakuyonjuuhachi,' which only sounds like 148 if you are slurring your words because you've had most of a bottle of Sake.  Which in retrospect would have made the entire experience more enjoyable and equally efficient.  But we were in luck!  Word had spread throughout the Meito City Ward workforce that there were two clueless Gaijin camped out in the waiting area and these Gaijin did not seem likely to leave on their own account.  

The steely eyed determination of someone who wants to learn how to sort trash.

So after twenty minutes of arguing about whether they called 148 or 209 over the loudspeakers, we were interrupted by a reluctant employee who beckoned us over to window 3, where we either agreed to pay something for healthcare insurance or authorized the sale of a kidney.

Then we were asked to go to the last window.  Window 2.  Although we didn't know it at the time, it was the dreaded Pension Window.  You see, in Japan, you must pay into the National Pension System even if you are a temporarily unemployed forensic psychologist.  By now, it was about 5:10 pm and they were turning the lights off as we stood at the window.  But we were too close to our goal to take a hint.  We were greeted by a surly man who looked exasperated when I kept repeating konnichiwa to all of his questions and then decided that his best course of action in dealing with two clueless Gaijin was to repeat the same Japanese phrase over and over again while jabbing his finger on different parts of an orange form on which there was not one word of English.  By this point, however, I have to admit that I was distracted.  I was wondering whether we could legally leave the building without filing the pension paperwork, whether anyone would try to stop us, and whether I could vault over the last row of seats.  But the chair backs looked pretty high and the 'Information' lady looked like she worked out, so I stuck it out.

There was a happyish ending to this story.  After ten minutes of jabbing and konnichiwas, an incredibly nice man emerged from the nether regions of the office and explained (in English) that we might be able to receive a pension exemption but that we needed to do this in a different office.  Although I recognized this might be a desperate gambit to get us out of the office, I was grateful for the out.  The nice man repeatedly apologized for his near flawless English.  Amy laughed and said 'your English is much better than my terrible Japanese' - but she tried to say this in Japanese and ended up saying something roughly like 'your poodle is eating our trash.'  Which is a pretty rude thing to say while laughing.

The nice man smiled and said he was going to destroy the paperwork that we painstakingly completed earlier.  He gave it to the other guy who ripped it into more pieces than seemed truly necessary.