tavie.com

We're back in Tokyo, this time with Kirsten (and Kirsten's computer, and the free wi-fi in the hotel lobby.) In a few hours K & I will meet up with Naomi, my Japanese KITH friend whom I haven't seen since that magical time with Scott in Montreal in July 2001. She'll be our native Tokyo guide. The adults (ha ha) are on a day trip to Mt Fuji so we have some blessed freedom.

My impressions of Kyoto: It's pretty. Kind of boring, but pretty. It's red maple season and the colours are mind-boggling. I kind of get that Shinto idea that if something in nature moves you it's because of the spirit, because I'm pretty sure I fell in love with a flaming maple spirit of some kind that inhabited a tree near our hotel. I also took the opportunity in this land of plenty (of sugar) to have a gingerbread latte in the Starbuck's in the mall by our hotel. What happens in Kyoto stays in Kyoto. I'm pretty sure I'm undoing 2 years worth of low carbing in this country. It will be a very lean Christmas for me. But it's really, really fun to eat whatever I want. Really.

Kyoto is all shrines and temples. They got kind of the same after awhile. We went to one that was really, really awesome in that Big Bird visited it in Big Bird in Japan. The Sanju-Sangen-do temple with the 1,001 statues of Kannon. That was neat.

My favourite thing about Japan is watching my sister speak Japanese to everyone. They keep saying to her, "Nihongo ga ojouzu desu ne" which she tells me means "Your Japanese is good". That's MY sister!

HAPPY BELATED CHERYL DAY and HAPPY BELATED THROGSGRAFEN! Both were on Thursday. I had sukiyaki on Thanksgiving, but I had a great turkey dinner at the Morts' on Wednesday.

See you on Sunday!

(This post was brought to you by the letter G and the number googol.)

Why are you in Tavie's head? 11:51 PM | shower me with attention

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Tomorrow we have to get up at 4 in the morning to get a 5:30 train and then 2 more trains totalling about 7 hours worth of train rides from here to Kyoto.

Fuckety hell.

I really, really like Kirsten's friends. Really a lot. I'm glad she found them. It's about time she had a Gang of her own. (You know, like Archie and Jughead and Midge and Moose. I'm the Moose of my Gang.) I met Angie (the Gina), Phil (the Mike), Leslie (the....??? I don't think we have a Leslie), an Irish guy whose name I forgot, Shina (the goofy boy - despite the gender he is definitely the Pena), Crazy Bartender whose name I forgot... Kirsten spoke a lot of Japanese to everyone and she's not so good at remembering to translate for the monolingual (like Linn is) so I just caught a few words here and there, but whenever she said futago there was the same look of shock. Yes, we're twins! No, really! Ah, I've missed that look.

Er, uh, huh, what? 4 in the morning tomorrow? I know that's like 2 in the afternoon to my body, but that's actually when I'm sleepiest-- lunchtime-- so, yeah, that'll be hard. Shit, I better get to bed.

Back on Sunday, no more internet, Sayonara!

Why are you in Tavie's head? 7:07 AM | shower me with attention

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

While I still have internet access (just tonight, we go to Kyoto tomorrow and then to Tokyo again with K-chan*) let me jot some impressions. Kirsten lives in Kashiwazaki, which is incredibly rural small-town-y compared to our cosmopolitan experiences. We met Kirsten's delightful friend Angie (she is very matter-of-fact and friendly and at ease with strangers, which is so important in my social-phobic eyes) who helped us get our stuff to Kirsten's apartment. Kirsten's apartment is two-level, tiny by house standards but huge by NYC apartment standards. Today K-chan will take us around her town. Tonight we'll have a Thanksgiving dinner with her friends the Morts, who are from Indiana and have lived here 14 years. Please Lord I do beseech thee to let my Dad not be obnoxious to these nice people.

I am on a CARB BONANZA. It started on the plane when I decided the hell with it and ate all the damn rice with my disgusting plane chicken. It was downhill from there. I am positively giddy on this sugar-high. My favourite thing has been the rice balls wrapped in seaweed that we bought in the market in front of that big temple. Holy moly am I sugar-happy. I feel so fat but so satisfied. Like a cat. Or a big, lumbering gaijin water-buffalo.

We went on a day-long tour the first day. These are my mom's specialty. She always books a day-long bus tour. That was okay. The guide was a funny old man who told us lots of stories about his personal life as we passed by presumably big landmarks, and then he'd remember to throw in something about the landmark as it whizzed by. At one point we stopped at a mall, for unfathomable reasons, and I was delighted by the Disney Store. That slut bunny, Thumper's girlfriend, is marketed HUGE here. She is nonexistent in the states, that little yellow bunny, but here she is a Disney superstar on the order of Cinderella or Minnie Mouse. Ditto Marie from The Aristocats. I am fascinated by this sort of thing. K's friend Olga says, "Japan is Disney's secret empire." How I wish we had time for Tokyo Disneyland. I am so, so desirous of seeing this place, which is best suited for me to note the subtle differences between cultures-- in an homogenized Disneyfied environment, the cultural variations will pop out like sore thumbs. But that will have to wait until my next trip to Japan. Of which there will be several, seeing as my sister is probably staying here fucking forever.

Yesterday we went to the Hamarikyu (?) garden, the "detached garden" (?), which was kind of like a tiny Central Park with the huge, ugly modern skyscrapers of Tokyo looming above the trees. It was very pretty, full of hobbit-hole like duck sheds dug into the ground, and pretty ponds. There was a cute red Riley-like cat picking his way aroun the shore of the pond and I watched him the whole way around the water and across the bridge, as he was travelling parallel.

We took a boat down a river (I'm not really paying attention to names, okay?), the one with all the different bridges in it, and there was a wild experience that made me wish to be an animator that makes sense to no one else I guess, but I watched the water rushing by through the reflections of my eyeballs in my sunglasses. It's hard to describe. You know when you're wearing sunglasses and if you focus close you can see your eyeballs magnified in them? I was watching those, sleepily, when I noticed I could see the water rushing by reflected in my irises which were reflected in the sunglasses on my face. It was so neat. It must have looked like I was staring, cross-eyed, into space, but I was really watching the scenery through my sunglasses. It would have made such a cool, cool animation. I wish I could recreate it. It was wild.

I am so full of sugar, babies. I may never eat a rice cake again. I ate one Atkins-friendly thing yesterday, and that was dried, salted squid. Mmmm. On the package it says, "Enjoy the fresh aroma of the sea." It smelled like low tide at Jones Beach (yes, I could smell it!) and it was literally a whole, dried baby squid. And I ate it all. You would be apalled. I may bring some back so some of you can witness this spectacle of me eating a whole dried baby squid. I can probably get them in Chinatown, come to think....

*Tee hee. She is so cute, like a little girl, so they call her K-chan. I still call her Bratface. Little rat fink was late picking us up from the train station.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 8:58 PM | shower me with attention

Blogging from Kirsten's computer in Kirsten's freezing apartment. I'm trying to shake this overwhelming sadness of seeing that she will be living here for quite a long time -- years, 3 years at least. Because she is very happy here.

I am so happy she is happy and I am so, so sad. So sad.

Maybe I just need some sleep. I'm really tired and totally dehydrated. I don't remember to drink enough when I'm traveling. And my parents are driving me nucking futs.

I went into Kirsten's room and saw Blue Bear on the bed-- I snuck him into her suitcase when she left-- and that just made me sadder even. I am so selfish.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 8:23 AM | shower me with attention

Monday, November 21, 2005

God save me, I forgot what a nightmare it is travelling?with my parents. At least Tante Joan`s here.

Tokyo is a lot like New York, but cleaner. Way, way cleaner. And the people are friendly as hell. But otherwise? Crowds? Check. Traffic? Check. Neon lights? Check...

TONIGHT WE SEE KIRSTEN!!!!!!! I`m excited like the night-before-Disney-World excited. Weird.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 4:51 PM | shower me with attention