Japan with my Sister Part 1

Here's the original piece I was going to submit for last Theme Thursday: vacation. I didn't quite finish it in time because it's a long piece and I couldn't find the photos that went along with the story. Instead of putting this piece in I put my fund-raising flyer for Team In Training, Chemotherapy is no Vacation. I didn't receive any comments on it let alone a single donation. :-( People may not have read my post because I did post it Friday on the site and there were issues with the TT site.

I am not going to deviate from blogging about the Team, my running, or my fund-raising but I think I'll leave it out of Theme Thursday unless it's relevant. TT is for my creative side and I need to set some time aside to think, write and photograph.

I was thrilled to see that this week's TT is suitcase! My vacation story won't go to waste! Here's my true tale of Japan.

SFO.
"We'll see you in the fall," I yelled to my sister as she waved good bye to all of from behind the metal detector. My husband waved, my mother cried, my uncle and aunt held on to my mother, and my sister's boyfriend stood on his toes to get one my glimpse of her. My sister, Alejandra, looked at us one more time with a huge smile before making her way to her gate. She was on her way to catch a plane to Japan where she'll live and teach English for a year in mountains of Gunma-ken. It was early August.

My husband and I were happy and excited for my sister, "What a great experience for her," I told my mother. My husband gleefully chimes in saying, "Yeah, think of the peace and quiet we'll have now that's she gone." My mother face quickly maddens and slaps him in the arm. My uncle and aunt start teasing my mother in the same way. It was going to be a long drive home from SFO.

As soon as we arrive at my parent's place my darling husband starts planning our visit to Japan while my mother assess what my sister had forgotten to take, what else she needs, and plots how we can take it to her. "They don't have cilantro over there so you'll have to take some for her. She doesn't like chiles so you don't have to take that. And...," I stop listening.

"I want to go when the leaves turn color. We don't have a real autumn here. How about late October?"

"Yeah, during my birthday. That will work. Where and what do you want to see, Gabby?"

"I want to ride the Shinkansen bullet train and I want to go to Mt. Fuji! We'll fly into Tokyo so we should spend a couple of days there to take in the sites. Oh, sushi for breakfast at the fish market. I want to see the huge tunas with shark bite marks on them! Think we'll have time to go to Kyoto?"

"We'll be there 10 days, so I don't know. I do know that I want to buy beer from a vending machine and drink it on the streets!"

My mother overhears this and rolls her eyes, "cabezon." Spanish for big-headed.

"Oh yeah, you can do that. It's amazing what you can buy from a vending machine over there."

"What else can you buy over there Papa?"

"Don't listen to him. He doesn't know anything," my mother retorts.

"I lived there for three months, remember?"

My father goes on and on and on and my husband and I tune him out. Well, my husband has I really can't.

Japan here we come.
It's late October and my mother has two suitcases filled with Mexican food essentials and other things my sister said were absolutely essential, books, CDs, and toiletries. Two suitcases! I was not about to take all of that. The funniest thing my mother packed for my sister was a baggie of dried cilantro. Seriously. "I'm not taking that. Period." My mother wants me to put it in my carry-on. "No." (I now wish I took a photograph of the "baggie" and that suitcasse. I'm kicking myself.)

(Check this out, in Japan you don't have to carry your suitcases anywhere. You can walk up to a small store front in the airport where they deliver your heavy suitcases to any destination in Japan! It's great. My sister lives in the smack middle of Japan, several hours away by subway, train, Shinkansen train ride, and a long windy bus ride into the mountains, we weren't about to lug a suitcase filled with odds and ends and Mexican food products for a couple of days in Tokyo and Mt. Fuji before reaching her home. No way. Besides, Alejandra was meeting us in Tokyo. Yay, no big suitcases to carry but just our small rolling carry-ons! Here's my husband suitcase free!)

My sister is annoying. It was quiet at home without her and everyone in my family likes it that way. No more arguing, no more moaning, and no more bitching about this and that. My husband and I had forgotten until we met up with her in the Tokyo district of Asakusa late at night, in the rain, lugging around our suitcases on the wrong side of the river. No pun intended, we were on the wrong side. She was not happy that we got lost reading her wrong directions. "This is going to be a long 10 days," I groaned. My husband nodded and my sister started cussing flags down a taxi because she doesn't know how to reach the hostel either. Grrrr. I managed to read the map of colored soba noodles that acts as the subway and train maps of Tokyo on my own, I managed to reach the right neighborhood on my own, it was her sketchy directions from the subway station I wasn't able to understand, without an address to the hostel, is it a wonder I was lost?

Alejandra has her ups and her downs. She's fine when she's in a good mood, like everybody, but when she's in a bad mood Mr. Hyde comes out. Keep her in a good mood, keep her in a good mood has become my new mantra.

After sharing a room with a stranger in a hostel my sister quit her grumbling and fell asleep. Never going to camp or sleeping in a dorm room, having stranger share a room was unsettling to me. Sharing a bathroom and shower with an entire floor was also odd-and this being Japan where everyone takes their shoes off at the front door, leaving my shoes at the front door five levels below, very very unsettling. (Leave it to me to think that someone might steal my shoes.) I fell asleep wondering if my shoes wouldn't be there in the morning. I didn't voice my concern when we climbed the five flights of stairs up to our room, but it's the only thing I dreamt that night.

I can hear my sister tell me over and over how nice and clean and how helpful the Japanese people are. They're courteous and honest, they're not going to steal some stinky black pair of converse. But the hostel is filled with foreigners, not Japanese, and they're not honest. My black converse are probably a great pair of shoes I retorted.

I was shocked to find how little pairs of shoes were left from the mountain of smelly shoes that filled the cubby holes, shelves, and hills from the night before. I was also shocked to see that my shoes were moved from one side of the door to the other. Probably because there were at least five pairs of black converse the night before and they were all jumbled. Luckily I have small feet.

Before leaving the hostel my sister had to eat her breakfast; congealed 36 hour old slices of chorizzo pizza from our local pizzaria in San Jose. No joke. Alejandra loved it. She didn't mind that I packed it in wax paper and carried it the front small pocket of my carry on either. It wasn't smashed or confiscated at customs. Lucky her.

Catching a subway line we trekked over to The National Tokyo Museum in Ueno. Our agenda: Ueno Park, to a market and second tallest pagoda in Asakusa, the awesome fish market, see the crazy and varied styles of Lolitas in Harajuku, checkout Shinjuku on our way to Shibuya, and eating all the appetizing foods along the way.

To be continued...