First of all, Friday afternoon we went to the elementary school with Ike. I wish that I had been allowed to take pictures there because it was so much fun and the kids were adorable! As soon as we entered the school and the kids saw Ike they all came running up to him yelling, "Hello, Dwight-sensei! How are you?" Then they would scream and break out in giggling fits. Older kids were giving younger kids piggy-back rides and were just wandering the halls between classes with no supervision. And they were SO good!!!! When they saw me and Pete the kids would point and whisper and start giggling again.
We went into his first classroom and the kids were in about third grade. We did some fun activities and then read the books I brought with me. One was Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? and the other was Goodnight Gorilla (they loved that one). We did other speaking activities as well as some self-introductions. They loved the smelly Highlights stickers we brought for them, too. The next class was a year older and we read the Eric Carle book that is co-written with a Japanese author. It is the same story only half is in English and half in Japanese. One of the students read the Japanese text and Ike read the English. It was a fun afternoon!
We went home and packed and caught the 4:45 bus to Tokyo. It was a four hour ride (I think-my bus and train rides are all blending together). When we arrived at the bus station in Tokyo I insisted on getting a taxi to find our Ryokan (a traditional Japanese hotel) since Ike wasn't sure where it was and it involved trains/subways, plus we had all of our luggage (5 big suitcases plus Ike's stuff). The taxi driver wasn't sure where to go but Ike had a map, which the driver kept pulling over to check. It took about a half hour and we were driving down these dark, desolate looking alleys and still couldn't find it. At one point he was creeping through this dark tiny street and it was really freaking me out. All of a sudden we came upon this really quaint and brightly light place that was our Ryokan! I was SO relieved. I kept picturing us being dropped off in the middle of the seediest part of Tokyo at 10:00 at night with all of our suitcases and no clue where we were. Luckily this didn't happen. :-) We got checked in and taken to our room which was GREAT! It was so big, especially compared to the tiny hostels we stayed at in Kyoto and Hiroshima. We were hot and stinky and found out that all they had were communal baths. :-/ Luckily it was late enough that nobody else was using it (and I discovered that the door had a lock) so we took turns cleaning up.
Saturday we explored some different shopping districts around Tokyo. We went to one place that is supposedly the busiest intersection in the world. I got a great video of it that I'll post on facebook eventually. We got sort of turned around on our way home and had trouble finding our Ryokan, but with Pete's keep sense of direction and Ike's Japanese (and my kvetching!) we finally made it back.
On Sunday we woke up to rain (pretty much the first we've had during our two weeks in Japan) and we called the guy that we bought our baseball tickets from to see if the game would be canceled. We had to wait until 1:00 to find out so we sat in our room and played gin. Turns out the game was postponed an hour but still on so we headed out for the subway. It was still misting but not too bad, and we found the stadium okay. It was a great game (the first professional baseball game for both the boys!) and the fans were just crazy. :-) It was fun watching the various cheers and dances they did while rooting for their teams. It was a nail-biter to the end, and in the last inning the home team pulled off an amazing win. We made it back to our part of town, ate supper, then went back to the Ryokan and crashed.
Monday morning we woke up and packed up all our stuff and took a taxi back to Shinjuku, the main train/bus station. Ike got us tickets for the airport bus and we (I) said our tearful good-byes. :-( Pete and I got on our bus and headed to the airport while Ike caught a bus back to Iijima. We had a five hour wait for our plane (yeah, even by Moss standards that was way early, but we had to check out of the Ryokan by ten and didn't want to wander around Tokyo with all our luggage). We finally boarded at 5:15 but had an hour delay on the plane due to high traffic because of the weather. The 11 hour plane ride went okay, except for the loud, screaching 3 year old that was by us. We landed in Chicago but missed our connecting flight to CR because of the long delay at customs. The next flight we could catch was five hours later at 9:40 pm, so we waited some more at the airport. We finally boarded the plane and then Pete noticed his window frame was broken. He told the flight attendent, who notified the pilot who looked at it and got a mechanic. They ended up just taping it. :-P We got out on the runway but then had to go back to the gate because apparently a panel was open. Yes, by now I was a bit crazed and ready to scream, but I kept it together. :-D We got the panel taken care of quickly and were soon on the way to CR. Erick met us at the airport and we were back in Washington at midnight.
Overall this was the most amazing trip I've ever been on. I will make one more blog entry later about my thoughts and observations about Japan and the Japanese. Now I'll go put some more photos up on facebook.
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