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.

School

To home school or not to home school.  That was never a question.

Very soon in our planning, it was clear to everyone (even people that barely knew us) that having me try to teach our children would be catastrophic.  You know, 6:00-pm-nightly-news-emergency-admission-to-state psychiatric-facility level catastrophic.  It might have been bad for the kids, too.

For many of us, the pandemic effectively revealed core limitations in our parenting.  Limitations in patience.  In household cleaning and management.  In personal maintenance.  And in teaching.  Because up until that moment, we relied on outsourcing to the public school system while reassuring ourselves that we were doing a great job managing and teaching our children.  Just not between the hours of 8 and 3.  We needed a break.  But let me tell you, the months I spent in 2020 trying to help two Douglasses learn fundamentals of geometry that I could barely remember gave me a deep and abiding respect for teachers.

Upon reading this, Amy pointed out that she is, in fact, a teacher and wouldn't mind a bit of deep and abiding respect.  When she said this, my first thought was that she might be the perfect candidate to home school our daughters, particularly given that we had no other options.  But then I thought it would be hard for me to expect that she do her Fulbright research and home school our daughters.  I may have phrased that incorrectly.  It wouldn't be hard to expect it.  It would be hard to suggest it.

So, to our daughters' great horror, we adopted the only rational approach.  We enrolled them in the Nagoya International Junior and Senior High School, in which half their classes would be taught in Japanese.  Now, to call their command of the Japanese language negligible would be grossly overstating their abilities.  Tessa in particular managed to avoid learning any Japanese despite mandated time on the language app we purchased for her.  I consoled myself with the knowledge that there is nothing like immersion combined with impending social humiliation to help people learn.  I'm pretty sure that's the guiding principle behind junior high schools everywhere.

At this school, Math, social studies, design, and gym are in Japanese.  Upon learning this, both daughters immediately raised a hue and cry, one of the few moments in which they have agreed since coming to Japan if not since birth.  "Math??!  Math is in Japanese?  That's impossible."

"Yes, Math is in Japanese" I responded in my calmest, most supportive, most educational tone.  "But it's not impossible.  Numbers are numbers.  They transcend culture."

"Transcend this, dad."

At their school, moral studies, comprehensive studies, music, and science are taught in English.  Oh and English is taught in English.  We told them, you'd better do good in English.  Lily looked supremely confident.  Tessa looked uncertain.

Our daughters on the first day of school.  They were acutely aware that they were not wearing the official uniform and would therefore stand out.

Um, a bit, I responded.  The clothes could make you stand out just a bit.

Our daughters walking in to the foyer of their school.  We were expressly forbidden to get any closer, a threat that was hissed repeatedly at us as we approached the school.  I now realize we do a lot of hissing in our family.  So we hovered by the gate and watched anxiously to see if they needed our help.  I'm pretty sure that made them feel really supported.

Amy spent the majority of that day fretting about how they might be doing and whether they needed anything and did I see anything on the home page of the Nagoya Times about a tragic accident at the school.  I had to use my undercover therapy skills to keep her relaxed.  SCBT (Stealth Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).  It's only effective when she doesn't know it's happening.  When we returned to pick them up, our fears proved wholly unfounded.  They emerged from the school in the middle of a group of six girls all laughing and joking.

However, our girls continued to express concern that they lacked the appropriate school uniforms.  We decided to bite the bullet and buy the school uniforms, which were a cool 142,470 yen.  Finding the store that sold the uniforms was pure hell.  Google helpfully provided a route that led us from the Higashiyama line to the Sakura-Dori line to the Sakae exit up three blocks directly to a store that sold ... Louis Vuitton hand bags.  I triple checked the name and the Google directions.  Both were correct.  According to the infinite wisdom of Google, we were exactly where we were supposed to be.  Out of ideas, I stood on the sidewalk with my face pressed against the glass trying to see if there were any Nagoya International Junior and Senior High School Uniforms behind the racks of LV X YK Coussin PM.  

Nope.

To the horror of my family (Amy included) I entered the store and gave a suave nod to the exceptionally well dressed clerk and then had Google Translate ask whether they sold school uniforms.  The proprietor adopted what I can only assume is a patented pained expression and said "this ... is not that store."  For some reason, Google Translate kept autocorrecting my "no shit."  The proprietor waved his hand vaguely behind me and said "it is five blocks that way."  So we left his crappy high end store, vowing never to purchase a Louis Vuitton bag, and walked five blocks in the direction of his wave.  Google continued to assert that we needed to turn around and return to the Louis Vuitton store.  There was a tense five minutes where we stood on the corner of a random street in downtown Nagoya and waited for one of us to have a good idea.  Or any idea.

Ultimately, it turned out that the uniform store included link to their address embedded on its website.  In our defense, the link was buried underneath a mass of Japanese phrases.  We managed to force Google to direct us to that address, which was a nondescript, five story building.  However, I was able to decipher the name of the uniform shop on the sign outside and we rushed inside.  We entered the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor and ... nothing happened.  "Tessa," I said, "it's on the third floor.  Press the button that says three."  "Transcend this, dad," she responded while she repeatedly pressed the third floor button.  Because buttons.  However, the elevator did not move.  Because not open on Wednesdays.

The following day, Amy and I went to the shop after lunch.  Two very nice employees managed to inform us that our daughters needed to be present to be measured for the uniforms, and that the uniforms would not be ready until mid March (when the school term was over).  Through gratuitous use of Google Translate, Amy was able to determine that one of the women had twins and a few jokes later, viola, we could have the uniforms later that day if their size was "in stock."  My perspective was - any size is their size.

If I've lost any readers by describing (in excruciating detail) the process of purchasing school uniforms in Japan, I can only say one thing. 

Worth it.

The Belt

This is going to drive my linear readers crazy, but I've gotta go back in time a bit.  You see, there was an epilogue for the belt story.  Some of you are probably like "an epilogue?  The belt thing didn't warrant a story in the first place" while others of you are like "wait, did he write something about a belt?  Or is that a metaphor?"

Nonetheless.

After twenty two hours traveling with my family, there were a few things I really wanted; a beer, a bed, and a belt.  So, after fulfilling the first two objectives, I forced Tessa to accompany me on a belt purchase under the guise of exploring Tokyo.  We found a five floor mall and after what seemed like twenty two hours, we found an H&M store.  In Japan, H&M stores are exactly like H&M stores in the US, except everything is written in Japanese.  I nevertheless managed to meander my way around the store with Tessa in tow until stumbling upon the belt rack.  And there I found this beaut.

I approached checkout with a great deal of trepidation.  There were four lanes and a long line of people waiting, which gave me a lot of time to practice what I was going to say.  But the cashier threw me off my game.  As I approached the counter, she blurted a stream of Japanese at a terrifying rate of speed.  In that moment, I realized that our language app had to have been playing at quarter speed, because as far as I could tell she said one very long word to me.  She looked at me expectantly and I'm sad to say I panicked.  'Hai!' I said while grinning and shaking my head.

"Dad," Tessa whispered, "You just said yes while shaking your head."

Thinking back to my hours of work on the language app,  I realized she was right.  That didn't make much sense.  What was the word for no?  I drew a blank.  So I improvised.  Nodding with what I hoped was an appropriate level of intensity, I said "Wa!"

Loosely translated, Wa means 'the.'  

At this point, the clerk decided her best bet was to make the rest of the decisions about the transaction herself, including whether I wanted a bag, whether I wanted a rewards card, and whether I wanted to sign up for the Tokyo H&M Rewards Credit Card.  The answer to all questions was apparently Hai.

I can't say that I'm proud of what happened next, but I know Tessa wasn't.  I shifted into the purely pragmatic mindset that has served me so well as a forensic psychologist.  Identify the facts and act accordingly.  Two facts were clear: a) I had been in sore need of a belt for twenty two hours, and b) I had just acquired a belt.  So, rather than carrying the belt back to the hotel in a bag (which seemed kind of insane), I took the belt out of the bag and started ripping the tags off.  To Tessa's dawning horror, this occurred in the middle of the hallway just outside the store.  

She turned paper white and said 'dad, what are you doing?'  

Although it seemed pretty obvious to me, I said 'I'm going to put my belt on.'  

She said 'I'm out,' and immediately walked into the nearest store.

As I threaded the belt through the loops, it occurred to me that this was probably what philosophers might call an inflection point and astrophysicists might call an event horizon.  That moment when you have passed through to the other side and decided not to be embarrassed by events that would cause an aneurysm in the teenage set.  Although it's not a cool place to be, I've gotta say that it's pretty comfortable.  I'm seeing a tracksuit and Brooks running shoes in my immediate future.

I've included a reenactment of the interaction below.  Tessa covering her face perfectly captures her embarrassment both at the mall and in our apartment as she said "Dad, who does a reenactment of putting on their belt?"

This guy.

Why wouldn't I put my belt on in a hallway?

This isn't a real post ...

 ... but I thought you might like to see where the "magic" happens.

Today the magic happened here ...

I'm sitting in the Istanbul Cafe in the Osu shopping district while the ladies peruse the numerous second hand clothing stores. I'm simultaneously working on my novel and the next blog post, which will almost certainly lead to some confusing cross branding.  If dystopian sci fi ends up in the blog, my apologies.

Before you accuse us of being bad parents for not having our children in school (or drinking on a Wednesday late late afternoon - 5:00 adjacent), as far as we can tell, there is no school today.

The Old Apartment

This all happened two weeks ago.  I am woefully behind on the blog.  Even if I omit all of the really boring things that happened (which represents about 98% of my experience), there's a lot to cover. 

Finally in our Nagoya hotel room, Lily fell into the fetal position both from fatigue and despair at the lack of good programming on the hotel television.  She curled up tighter when I suggested it was "nothing that watching a good sumo match can't solve."  

Parenthetically, this was before she discovered Gilmore Girls on Netflix.  Now she only curls into the fetal position when we cut her off before she finds out who Rory is going to date.

Amy and I went to the lounge, where we both assumed the adult version of the fetal position.

Nagoya from 24 floors up.  

Breakfast at the hotel.  At this point, both teens were secretly wondering whether they might be able to live at the hotel or possibly be adopted by the Hilton family.  From their perspective, the only downside was being in the same room as their father.  But perhaps he might get his own room or pay for our stay by working in the kitchen (or both).  

That afternoon, we took the metro from Sakae to Hongo Station, which was a few blocks from our new apartment.  

I feel compelled to note that it is impossible to rent an apartment in Japan as a foreigner.  Not virtually impossible, but plain impossible.  As some of you know, I spent most of the summer hyperventilating every time I searched online for a place to live.  There was nothing.  My search terms were comprehensive and ranged from 'furnished apartments rent Japan' to 'warehouse space desperate foreigners."  Our success in renting an apartment was completely dependent on the kindness of a friend.

We later learned that Japanese landlords are reluctant to rent to foreigners because they are convinced we cannot understand the trash sort system.  As someone who has lived here for 3 weeks, I can tell you that is absolutely correct.  The first week, we had piles of trash stacked in the apartment while we debated what exactly went in the blue bag versus the red bag.  It got dark pretty fast.  

Although we did find this helpful guide online, we honestly just run downstairs every day and see what other people have stacked in the dumpster area.

Shots of the interior.  We weren't hoping to take 'spartan' to the next level.  Our rental furniture had not yet arrived.

Lily demonstrating an advanced modern dance move known as the shindig.

Lily's attempt to break into the little known but ultra competitive Genkan modeling.  

This is our tatami room.  As a quick wikipedia search will tell you, tatami rooms are traditional Japanese rooms that are designed to serve as spaces of peace and meditation.  Years ago, they were a sign of nobility.

Those days have clearly passed.

Lily had other ideas.  Her first plan was to use the space as a "flop room" (not to be confused with flop house) in which we could randomly walk in and flop on the floor.  She claimed that flopping filled her with a sense of peace and gravitas.

Her second idea was far more ominous.

Upon seeing this sign on the door, I should have immediately recognized that I had no place in that room.  But, a remote, primitive and immensely powerful part of my brain has long refused to acknowledge that I am older than twenty four.  That part of my brain continues to insist that I can do anything younger people can do, including walking at 4 mph and getting out of bed in the morning.

So I agreed to do the workouts with Lily (you should be grateful that there is no visual record of that experience because it involved a lot of sweating and grunting and complaining).  She brought up an "easy" workout on youtube and it is here that I will offer some very useful advice to my elderly readers.

If the yoga instructor a) looks nineteen, b) can touch her toes, c) behind her back, and d) while speaking in a calm voice, you should immediately end the video.  Don't be seduced by the "easy" label on the video.  That is a lie.  You can tell by the suggested video links to the side, which will include EMS Rescues and Pain Management Without Opioids, and Pain Management with Extra Opioids.

What I now realize I needed is someone who understands both me and my body.  In the future, any and all ab workouts must be led by a fifty-something, "stout" individual who intersperses an occasional crunch with several sips from a craft IPA.  You know, a routine I can do without injury and which simultaneously works abs and biceps.

If I can't find that online, I'm starting a yoga vlog.

In closing, I should mention that Lily crushed the ab workout.  I didn't end up in traction, but I had to find creative ways to avoid using my abs for a few days.

From Tokyo to Nagoya on the Shinkansen

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.

Signage Part 3

As long as I can remember, my father has been fascinated with signs.  Throughout my childhood (and adulthood), our walks and deep meaningful conversations were frequently and abruptly truncated by a familiar pattern; he would stop, whip out a camera and take a picture of a 'help wanted' sign.  To be fair, some of those help wanted signs were pretty unique.  One time in the UK, we saw an advert for "Bar seeks waitress.  Only the well endowed need apply."  Not necessarily what you'd see in the states.  But still.  I was pretty sure I was saying something important.

In any event, I thought he'd appreciate some of the signs we've been seeing.

 

Okay, I know this is not so much a sign as a really angry foodstuff.  But it left me wondering ... did they do any focus groups on this?  You know, compare this psychopath red dino who seems to be saying 'eat me or else' to a happy blue dino saying 'I taste good and I'm smooth going down.'

Come on people.  Mind out of the gutter.

This fish is either a) the road's mascot, b) a way to make you pay attention to the fact that there are earthquakes so major that they close the emergency roads, c) one possible cause of a major earthquake (massive falling fish) or d) an advertisement for a nearby sushi restaurant that remains open during natural disasters.  

Emergency road closed due to earthquake?  Come on down to Bob's Sushi.  

So far, the signs have been pretty threatening.  Welcome to Tokyo.  Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Angry Red Dinosaurs.

I don't know what they have against dogs, because what harm could a little pasturing do?

I would not have considered golf an inherently dangerous activity, unless we are talking about the new hybrid sport, MMA golf.  It's true that the crowd went wild when Mickelson made Woods tap out on an arm bar, but that's definitely not something you want to see in this area.

Sometimes, I think they have some extra space on the sign and so throw in a pretty unlikely prohibition.  Midnight windsurfing?  Maybe it's a thing.

Subway advertisement for feline specialized clothing.  I know, I know.  Technically lions are Panthera and only distantly related to cats.  If you think specialized feline clothing isn't a thing, you haven't been to Japan.

This isn't a photoshopped pic or something I downloaded from the dark web or a wanted poster.  No, this is real.  Cat cafes.  A place where you can go to drink a cup of coffee and be scared shitless when a cat jumps on you out of nowhere.

There was a woman standing by the side of this sign with two cats stuffed into her kimono.  You can see her foot at the bottom right.  I wanted to take a picture but I thought it might be disrespectful and my eyes started itching.  For those allergic to cats, the cat cafe is the equivalent of a CIA black site.  Waterboarding?  Hah.  How about a kitten rub down?!

This box pretty much confirmed every QAnon conspiracy theory I repeated mindlessly when I got sucked into things I read on the internet.  Human Shape Snacks!  You know Soylent Green is made of people, right? 

You've gotta be thinking exactly the same thing I was thinking.  What words came before that?  Bona fide?  Authentic?

And what does it say that the human shape is the same as a can of Coke or a package of cigarettes?

"Come back soon!"
Sob.
It's like the universe saying we made a mistake.

Correction

My astute daughter Lily inadvertently called me funny when she said 'Daddy, how do you make funny things come out of thin air."  That's a win.

But that's not the correction.

Lily noted that there was a serious error in my Christmas letter.  I wrote that she was the sole professional author of the family.  I was wrong.  When I wasn't looking, it turns out that Amy published a few journal articles and chapters and "an edited book and a textbook.  Do you mind??"  Tessa is now working on a biography of Murphy.  So when that gets published, I'll get to be the sole something.

Plumbing the depths of plumbing in Japan

A few years ago, one of our friends muttered that we needed to include trigger warnings for some of the posts.  Apparently, he had been reading the blog during breakfast and happened upon my post on daggys.  His black coffee was suddenly no longer quite as appealing.  

Well, consider yourself warned.  Today we are going to tackle the issue of Japanese plumbing.

It is safe to say that the Japanese are literally decades if not centuries ahead of the US when it comes to the sophistication of toilet tech.  The toilets are a marvel.  First, the seats are contoured, comfortable, and heated - so it may not be uncommon in drafty apartments to find your spouse hunkered down on the lav as a way to keep warm.  I'm not saying that's happened.  I'm just ... not not saying it.

Second, the seats have an array of 'after-business' options best explained by the hieroglyphics below ...

There's the torpedo

or the tsunami

and the seats also allow for various levels of pressure.  You'll notice that this toilet was set to the lowest level, also known as "the American."

And finally, the all important stop button.

You could theoretically entertain yourself for quite a long time trying all the options.  If there were a mini fridge by the toilet, you would almost never have to leave.

I should parenthetically also note that if you are intending to take pictures of toilets in a foreign county for your blog, it is best to lock the door.

Over the course of our first few days in Tokyo, an odd thing happened in our hotel bathroom.  The three women in my life all experienced existential crises in deciding whether to "take the plunge" and hit torpedo or go full tsunami and I often heard them gathered in the bathroom debating about who should go first and how hot the water might be and how big a difference pressure level 2 was from pressure level 1.  From what I understood, they all seemed troubled by the possibility that the water jet might be strong enough to eject them from the toilet and pin them against the far wall.  My best advice to them was to relax and accept what comes.  However, I drew the line at sitting down and taking a tsunami for the team for no reason.  I'm not a show pony dammit.  They could just wait a while.

Tessa is the only one who had good reason to be scared ...

Flashback to 2016

Tessa's first experience with a bidet was traumatic.  

The first thing to keep in mind is that Tessa is a button pusher.  If she sees a colorful button under a flashing light, she is guaranteed going to push that button at least four times.  If she happens to beat you into an elevator, you're hitting every floor from 1 to 10.  This tendency has changed over the years, as she now tends to push psychological buttons.  But it still holds.  

Tessa's traumatic event occurred our first night in Tokyo, when we ventured out of our hotel room and enticed the girls into a random restaurant around the corner.  To our eyes, it looked like an authentic Japanese udon restaurant - dim lighting, low seating, and everything written and spoken in a language we could not understand.  After sitting still for fifteen seconds, Tessa announced she had to use the bathroom and off she went.  This was not unusual, as Tessa has long attempted to spend most family dinners in the bathroom.

After a long time, Amy looked at me skeptically and said "Tessa's been gone a long time."

"Uh huh," I said, tapping a noodle with a chopstick to ensure it was, in fact, a noodle.

"I'm going to check on her."

Three minutes later, Amy returned with a bedraggled and wet Tessa.

The story goes like this.

Tessa handled the first several steps like a champ.  Find the bathroom.  Check.  Lock the door.  Check.  Sit on the potty.  Check.  Business.  Check.  But here is where it all went south.  Because buttons.  Tessa noticed that the toilet seat had many buttons with strange curved symbols.  So she selected one at random and pushed it.  

What followed was only described by a hysterical six year old, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of it all.  But my guess is that Tessa hit the tsunami button.  A massive stream of water struck her butt with the force of a hot tub jet.  She yelped and followed her instincts - which were to leap off the potty!  This might serve you well in some contexts, but in the bidet context it's a rookie mistake.  The water keeps coming.  So when Tessa leapt off the potty, water sprayed all over the bathroom - the mirror, the wall, the ceiling, the door, and Tessa.  Tessa's solution (and probably the only solution) was to sit back down on the potty.  But, as bidet pros know, this does not stop the tsunami.  The water kept spraying her butt and, every time she attempted to get up, the tsunami soaked the bathroom.  So Tessa was trapped.  For three minutes, she squirmed and shimmied and gyrated, seeking relief from the water cannon and promising that she would do anything (even sitting through family dinners) if she could just get off that potty.

When Amy finally got the door open, she said that the bathroom looked like the interior of a car wash.  

First day

Because we forced ourselves to stay awake until 8:30, we all had a great night's sleep.  And by great night, I mean that Tessa and I woke up at 4:45 and played Phase 10 until the sun rose.  This is a shot out our window towards Daiba, at the southern end of Tokyo.

After Amy and Lily woke up, we headed downstairs for our desperately needed breakfast and tried not to cause any trouble.  I practiced my two Japanese phrases (konnichiwa and arigato goziamasu) on everyone I met with the singleminded intensity of Rain Man.  

We wanted to travel into downtown Tokyo, but quickly discovered that you need cash in order to buy a subway ticket.  As you might remember, we were still on a credit union blacklist.  So we resigned ourselves to seeing the sights and walking around Daiba.  Walking might have been an overstatement.  People we passed would probably have described us as 'staggering' or 'shambling' and might have looked around for film crews thinking we were part of The Living Dead: Tokyo Dayz.

This is Fuji Television Broadcast Center, where they could film Tokyo Dayz: A gripping drama about a mild mannered forensic psychologist caught in the midst of a zombie apocalypse far from home.

Lady Liberty's sister.  The French really got around in the 1800s.

The Flame of Liberty, though Uncle Drew had a few NSFW captions for it.

There are vast underground labyrinths of these bubble machines, each of which will dispense an orb for the low cost of 300 yen.  Each orb contains a plastic Japanese artifact that is neither  necessary nor sufficient but still strangely addictive.  Because you're always left wondering ... what's in that next orb?

Dad, can I have another 300 yen?!

Tessa hoping for the Kiwi!

Airport '77?

Kudos to anyone who knows what I'm talking about.

Though maybe those aren't the kind of kudos you want.

Gundam Unicorn!

See you tomorrow!