Yesterday, while I was waiting for my food at the izakaya I got an emergency message, I happened to be looking at my phone so I read it immediately. It warned that an earthquake had started and ... the ground started rocking and nobody gave it a second thought. So this is what all that "prediction" effort has gone into, with not even enough time to finish reading the message, or to send a prayer to the Almighty.
Today I spent half the day flying from the Sapporo airport (which is in Chitose) to Tokyo-Haneda, and then jumping into a second leg to Osaka. On the flight to Tokyo I drew seat 63A, which put me 2/3 down the airplane, at a window seat. The two seats to my right were occupied by two short Japanese ladies, who kept their eyes down and never said a word. I like the politeness of the Japanese, but on leaving the plane it becomes a real nuisance because some ladies just keep their eyes down and let the guys go first. The guys, ignoring deplaning etiquette across the world, just crowd the corridor trying to be the fist out. I was fuming, so I gave a gentle nudge to my ladies, and as soon as I had the way free I cut sharply in front of the next guy, who looked at me with absolute surprise. Some Japanese are just rude.
Then again, waiting for the luggage to be delivered is an absolute joy. Americans crowd around the conveyor belt, with their useless carts by their side and the whole family to witness dad picking up the luggage (and blocking the view of everyone else). If you attempt to squeeze through you will probably swing yourself against a cart, stumble on a kid, or give grandma a whack in the head. Not in Japan. Here everybody stays a good three feet away from the conveyor belt, carts are not pressed into service until the luggage has been retrieved, and dad gets to do all the work without having the family all around him. Japanese are such polite folks.
While I was getting my ticket for the second leg, at the Tokyo airport, I got another earthquake alert. Excellent! Time to confirm my theory that such "predictions" are useless. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, ... forty one thousand. Nada! It had been a false alarm! So I will repeat what I say to my students every year. For a forecast to be useful (1) it has to be timely, providing enough time for people to take protective action, and (2) it has to be accurate, or like my friends at the airport you very soon learn to ignore it.
When I landed in Osaka the sky was gray and the runway looked wet. Note to self: Buy an umbrella at the first possible chance. I was planning on taking the bus to town, so I was hurrying to the exit, when I saw a stand full of umbrellas, with a sign saying "Left behind. Feel free to take one". "Well, I don't mind if I do", I thought as I reached for one of the cheap transparent umbrellas that everybody else carries around here, but then I saw an umbrella with gravitas. An umbrella that was used to walking the corridors of power. An umbrella that would proclaim to the world "My master is a man of consequence". So I took it, and I am now the proud owner of an umbrella that I might feel obliged to carry with me back to California (or not, depending on how tired I am by the end of the trip).
Getting to Osaka proper I felt like the ultimate country bumpkin. This is a real city, vibrant, colorful, and crowded with crazy people. Teeny boppers like to dress like dolls, with lots of ruffles, bows, and shoes that would be the envy of a steel worker. Half of the older girls and young women like to dress like grunges, but the other half dress to the hilt. One young woman I saw had small, 3-dimensional sculptures of butterflies glued to her super long fingernails. Some of the young women look like animé characters straight from a manga comic book. It is very flattering for your typical skinny girl, but on older women it looks like ... well, let us say it is not pretty. Guys, universally, dress like grunges.
I am still perfecting my menu reading. For lunch I thought I had ordered warm soba noodles in beef broth, but instead got a big pile of cold noodles, which were pretty tasteless. Thank the Shinto gods for soy sauce, which is an exudate from the process of miso mold production, although I am sure the Japanese look with horror at the barbaric use that Americans make of soy sauce and wasabi mustard.
My hotel is a one-star typical Japanese hotel (but it has an onsen), and my room is exactly three tatamis in floor area (I am pretty sure that my friends at Hokkaido Adventures made sure the rooms they reserved were six or even eight tatamis in floor area). It is a place to sleep and little else. So, I decided to venture out into the town, to visit the Osaka Ukiyo-e Museum which displays the work of artists of the Edo Period. Turns out that it has works from my all time favorite Japanese artist, Utagawa Hiroshige. I bet you never could have guessed I had a favorite Japanese artist, because I didn't know I had one, but Hiroshige painted many of the famous prints we all have seen of Fujisan, and (my favorite) of the tsunami wave that entered the Bay of Edo in the early 1800's (one of my favorite print shirts has this particular print on it). By the way, Edo was the ancient name for Tokyo, and fuji means peak, so Mount Fuji would be Mount Peak.
Alas, after getting all fired up to visit the museum I rushed to make it on time for the very last entry time, only to find out that it is closed on Mondays. Rats! I will have another chance to visit it after my motorcycle tour comes to an end.
So I came back "pastoreando un ganso", looking at crazy people, fantastic food displays, the fish market, shops with this and that, and made it back to my hotel in time to take an onsen bath and come down to the lobby to write this blog entry. Tomorrow I go to pick up my scooter!
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