My trip to Tokyo (and the longest Sunday in recent memory) is over, and I'm strangely happy to be crashing back into reality. It started over thirty hours ago, at 6:30am Sunday in Tokyo, when I got up absurdly early to check out the Meiji shrine and the iris garden and forest around it. The shrine was beautiful, particularly since I was there early enough to avoid the crowds; it's in the middle of acres and acres of lush forest, so it's hard to believe that you're in the heart of downtown Tokyo. The iris garden only blooms in May and June, so I felt v. fortunate to see it -- it was like a river of irises meandering through an ancient forest, and I will post photos later if any of them turned out okay.
After seeing the shrine and the gardens, I went back to my hotel, showered, and had a leisurely brunch in the ground-floor restaurant. Then, I packed (v. quickly, since I was a bit too leisurely about brunch), checked out of the room, and hung out in the bar/tea room in the lobby for a couple of hours until it was time to board the bus to the airport. The bus took over an hour and a half (Narita airport is not conveniently located); and so even though I left the hotel four hours before my flight's departure, I didn't spend a lot of time waiting at the airport. The line for immigration exiting the country was absurdly long, so between that and scrounging for snacks to take on the plane (so that I didn't have to eat either of the disgusting meals they served), I only spent twenty minutes or so sitting at the airport before boarding the flight.
My anti-jetlag strategy seems to be working so far; I finished the book I was reading during the first ninety minutes of the flight, and then I slept for about six hours (fitfully, but with my neck pillow, eye mask, and ear plugs, it was as good as it was going to get) before waking up for the last bit of the flight. So, when I landed in SFO at 11:00am Sunday PDT, I was able to stay up all day (shocking, I know). The car that I arranged for picked me up on time, I was home a little before noon, and then I showered and put on a flow-y, fuchsia jersey-knit dress that was more appropriate for a party than a homecoming for one, but I thought that dressing in something other than sweats would help me stay awake. Then, I spent some quality time at Cafe Borrone, where I attempted to work on my book (with little success).
I came home and talked to my parents for awhile; they were in fine form, and while it feels like I've been gone for ages, I had just talked to them before leaving last week (as usual). Then, Vidius Chandicus came over and was v. eager to explore downtown Palo Alto (ha), so we went to Coupa Cafe and split part of a rather disgusting tres leches dessert (we sacrificed the rest of it). Deciding that our conversation would be better continued over wine, we adjourned to Joya, where we sat feeling somewhat shabby in the overposh lounge area while drinking red wine and catching up on all the things that have (not) changed since I've been gone. It was lovely to see her, of course, and I'm quite smug about the fact that she's come down twice to see me even though I've only been in town and in my new house for about ten days -- clearly I will get her to move to the glorious south bay someday.
After she dropped me off at my house, I vowed to stay awake for another couple of hours, so I started rereading Madeleine and Ferguson's story from the beginning to try to get back into it. I'm pleased with a lot of it, annoyed by some of it, utterly baffled (as usual) with how to make the beginning feel emotionally intense and exciting -- and I think more ready than I was earlier today to get back into the writing. I'm going to try to get up tomorrow and write before work -- if I'm ever going to finish this damn thing, I need to write a lot over the next month or so, and that means writing regularly during the week.
Now, though, I'm going to go to bed and hope that my jetlag isn't too horrific tomorrow -- wish me luck!
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