catch up

1. The trip to Ibaraki was great. We fetched grandma from the home, and went to see relatives at three different houses out in the countryside (which, in Japan, is still quite heavily populated). At each stop we were fed a fair amount of food. I recognized one of the houses, sort of, on the way in, enough to remember playing some Nintendo Famicon there once upon a time. We then went to see grandma's older sister at her nursing home. I believe some dust might have found its way to my eye when the two old ladies had their reunion.

The "family tomb" turns out to be a cluster of old stone markers on a bit of a rise. The maternal family name was all over the place.

2. I had my first all-nighter in Tokyo. I simply had to do it once, but I'll probably only ever do it once, at least on nights preceding work days. I and a few compatriots sang into the wee hours of the night. There were a few casualties, in the form of people passing out due to exhaustion or other reasons. I left sometime around 5, and had the rather eerie experience of walking through a nearly deserted Shibuya--no huge crowds, no streetside bands, no loud announcements from drug stores or karaoke joints, no flashing images or blaring music coming from 10 meter tall TV screens. I walked across Hachiko crossing with maybe 3 other people.

Made it to bed by 6, up at 9, to work by 10:50.

Fast forward 2 days:

3. Moving was a treat. By which I mean to say it was bloody awful. The new place is about 20-30 minutes walk along a path running down the fairly scenic river, so we made a few trips on foot, carting stuff on wheeled devices of various sorts. Our timing was off, which is to say our final push was made via taxi at about 2am--we had to work the next day, of course.

4. A week later, we're basically still in the moving process. The "sayonara sales" found in Metropolis magazine's classified section yield some great deals. Stuff bought through coworkers who are leaving the country can also be a boon. The trick, though, is getting the stuff from their door to yours. Today from a now-ex-worker we acquired 1 electric blanket, 1 small table, 8 plastic drawers, a pot and assorted kitchen items, a TV/VCR, and 2 light fixtures for a total of 6000 yen (they were only asking 5000) plus train fare (two trips for me, one for Kate). It's difficult, though, to put a price on effort and stress.

5. In speaking to some other people who also climbed Mount Fuji, and had somewhat worse luck with the weather than we did, I must doubly stress that the Fuji Kyuko bus is the pits. You cannot reliably predict the weather on Fuji more than maybe a day into the future, and you do not want to go up if there's a chance you could face even a few drops of rain. Apart from my altitude sickness, our trip up was absolutely wonderful; if it were cloudy it wouldn't have been particularly impressive, and if it were raining it would have been (I gather) akin to one of the less impressive circles of hell, but hellish nonetheless. So reserving Fuji Kyuko bus tickets two days in advance ought to be out of the question.

6. Probably it's good to have a day of truly solid rest sometime after hiking up Mount Fuji. I'll remember that next time. 6 day work week coming up, because of a favour done for a complete stranger, of all things. I was told he wanted different days off so that he'd have more time to move, and unfortunately I'm currently in a state where I tend to be sympathetic to that sort of thing.