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back
I'm back. Why are there so many gaijin here? Wait a minute, this isn't Japan. These are not foreigners. This is my fine house. This is my fine car. This is November in New England, not November in Hokkaido. The skies are gray and rainy and the leaves have fallen down but the traffic lights don't chirp and you can't buy hot coffee in cans from vending machines on every street corner. Starbucks coffee and a bagel and egg sandwich from Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast at 2:00PM. 96 e-mail messages, most of it get rich quick schemes. Several cubic yards of snail mail, most of it catalogs. If it's North Andover, this must be Tuesday.
sweatshirt
For most of the trip home I was convinced that I'd left my favorite sweatshirt in the Washington Hotel in Narita. I didn't. I had meant to put it in my carry-on bag in case I got cold on the plane, and when I realized it wasn't there I didn't remember packing it elsewhere. When I unpacked this afternoon, there it was in the suitcase with my hiking boots, etc.
Do you know the way to San Jose?
I went directly to bed when I got home last night and slept past noon today. I think I only slept about 4 hours total on the trip from Narita to Boston, and all of that was on the San Jose to Boston leg. The plane from Narita to San Jose was full, mostly with Japanese although there were more non-Japanese faces than I'd seen anywhere else. In Chitose airport outside Sapporo I met a fellow gaijin who was delighted to speak with me in English. He had just started reading Wild Sheep Chase so we talked some about that and about writing, favorite authors, how many other gaijin we had spotted... Yet it still seemed odd to see so many non-Japanese when I reached Narita and even odder to be back in the US when I changed planes in San Jose. I almost asked the waitress at Au Bon Pain for o-cha (green tea). I kept looking for the vending machines with Coffee Boss or UCC or Bear Bamboo Grass Tea , but all I could find was a Coke machine. Ah, what you can get used to ...
film tomorrow
So I mostly just lounged around today trying to get used to being home and to get over being tired. Wilbur slept curled up against my butt all night and morning and didn't start demanding to be fed until 1:00PM. Once I fed him and went out for coffee and breakfast, I dropped off the ten rolls of film for developing. I can't imagine what I took 10 rolls of. I completely skipped photographing the major snowstorm we had although I think I got some good shots of the minor one that preceded it. It was so rainy most of the time that the light just wasn't interesting for photography. I'm curious to see what I deemed worth photographing. The roll of film I shot at the Sapporo Botanical Garden is still in the camera with a few more exposures left on it. The ones I dropped off today will be ready tomorrow afternoon. Until then, here's a typical Hokkaido autumn landscape from a postcard.
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