Category Archives: Personal

No Good Idea Goes Unpunished

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I don’t know why I’m thinking about this today, but suddenly I’m reminded of an unpleasant moment when I was in the Boy Scouts back in Hayden, Colorado. It was one of those moments where personal initiative met personal ambition in a storm of politics. (Warning, some language below not safe for work and/or sensitive types.)

For reasons I don’t fully remember, but some kind of troop exposition was involved, our troop (Troop 193?) had to come up with an information booth based on one of the various merit badges. The idea was to put together a booth so impressive and so full of information that grown men would cry and your troop would win prizes (something like that). For reasons I also don’t remember we either were assigned or chose “Astronomy“.

On the way back home after our weekly troop meeting, my friend Bobby and I started talking about the booth and, in a sudden flash of inspiration/evil (depends on your point of view, as you’ll see later) we suddenly started rattling off ideas about how to make the booth. We’d have slideshows of celestial features–basically our own planetarium–and diagrams of various constellations. I remember us being really excited about the possibilities and wanting to volunteer to run the planning. Keep in mind, neither of us were particularly ambitious at the time, but the Boy Scouts is/was supposed to be about training young leaders and we suddenly had the leadership bug.

The next day I brought our ideas up to our Senior Patrol Leader, let’s call him EJ, while we were at school. He mumbled something about needing troop permission or something or other but he clearly wasn’t as excited about our ideas as we were.

I told Bobby what happened and we went about our school business. At the next troop meeting I had my first experience with what I would later realize is called a “shit storm of petty bullshit” (that’s a technical term). Although because I was just a teen all I could say was “it fucking sucked” (another technical term).

One of the senior adults in the troop, let’s call him DJ, also happened to be the father of EJ. Rather than simply saying “no” to our ideas, he’d actually spent the week calling other high level Boy Scout leaders in the area to all but accuse Bobby and me of beating his son to get control of the exposition. It was all part of a plot to undermine the leadership of the Senior Patrol Leader and to kill children in Asia with unwashed spoons. (Hey, I was only a teenager, that’s about how much sense it made to me at the time.)

We then spent pretty much the entire rest of the troop meeting explaining how we were excited about our ideas and thought we were helping out the troop and no offense was intended. The approximate response was “Well, you’re fucking not helping and offense was taken!” (Well that was the tone anyway and I wish it was an exaggeration.) I was right at the edge of walking out–and learned later at least three people would have gone with me–but it all got resolved by a troop vote and suddenly Bobby and I were the equivalent of a dodgy interim government after a coup when were were voted in charge.

We then got to work putting together the booth. This involved photographing celestial features and making posters of the merit badges requirements. Every time we asked DJ for advice we got “you’re in charge, you tell me” (remember, DJ was the adult, EJ was the teen.)

Somehow we got it all put together and assembled at the exposition. The job was then to occupy the booth and answer questions about the merit badge requirements. If our show was good enough, our troop would win the prize.

We did a pretty good job–we even knew most of the celestial features in the slide show–but one judge walked up and asked “What is the altitude for geosynchronous orbit?” This is roughly the equivalent of asking a kid showing horses at the county fair what the air speed velocity of a laden swallow was. Yes, it had a connection–both are animals and geosynchronous orbit is in space–but we weren’t supposed to be experts in space, just in the astronomy badge.

In the end we didn’t win, a much more politically connected booth that only handed out a few pamphlets did–once again, I wish that was a joke–and EJ and DJ both pretty much scoffed at Bobby and I for the rest of the year four our failure.

At that point, Bobby and I pretty much resolved never to take any initiative or to show any leadership or to try to implement any good ideas ever again. I still haven’t– I think Bobby enlisted in the Air Force so the jury’s still out on whether he has or not.

Temporary Friends Forever And Also in My Head

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Some of the best friends I ever had I knew for only a few days or a few minutes. One of them didn’t technically exist.

Back in my graduate school days I had the opportunity to attend a couple graduate student conferences in Columbia, Missouri. In each case I fell in with a group of fellow travelers based simply on being at the same place at the same time. I still do not understand how  groups like these form, but at the second one I was best friends with a university Marxist, a cute basketcase from somewhere in California, a Canadian guy, a guy from California carrying a rather potent thing some people refer to as “weed” and a guy who did “meta” criticism which I didn’t actually understand but he was really cool.

We hung out for the few days of the conference and I quickly learned that when I said something was “only a couple blocks away” I had to clarify if I was using coastal or mid-Western blocks. (Mid-Western blocks are apparently larger than coastal blocks and, according the complaints I received, the difference is apparently several miles.)

We all promised to keep in touch, which means we exchanged exactly one email and then never contacted each other again. Still, they were a fun group and I’m glad I got to know them for a while. I don’t even remember their names.

The ones I knew for a few minutes I met whilst waiting in some sort of endless line, probably university related, or at a ski slope. Misery loves company, especially when you’re all in the same miserable line.

One year, though, while I was still an undergraduate, I went skiing in Colorado with my friend Steve and his friends. I quickly encouraged them to abandon me as they had skiing skills and I didn’t. While I was on my own, and oddly before any alcohol was involved, I decided to pretend I was English and started speaking in an English accent. “Do the queues, I’m sorry, the lines, do the lines always move this slowly?”

I was worried at first when the lift attendant–some random blonde ski bunny–simply mocked my accent when I asked a question. I didn’t know the proper response: “Bugger off? Go #@$% yourself? Suck it, bitch?” I’m still not sure what a proper Englishman would have said, but then, technically, I wasn’t a proper Englishman.

I quickly developed a back story for my character. He was from Bath (which I had actually visited recently and still remembered some details about)  but he had an American mother, which would explain any pronunciation slips and odd phrasing. I chatted with a father on son during the gondola ride and remember talking about how humiliating it was to be falling about on the course whilst five year old children raced past with little trouble. I skied with them for a bit, but they were heading to a smaller lift that would take them to courses with names like “Widow Maker” and “Death’s Door” or which were so terrible they only had codes like “K1” (which means Kills One Each Day. No really. Look it up.)

The main thing the English accent got my friend, er, me was beer. I was still only 20 but I went to the bartender and asked “Which of your American beers do you recommend?” I got beer with no problems.

I said goodbye to that friend by the end of the day and never met him again. I never actually gave him a name–it was safer to use my own as “Dwayne Lively” is somewhat English sounding–but I always wish I’d thought to give him a name. I’m funny that way.

 

Alcohol and Smoke and Throwing Things Away

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I’ve written before how being around smokers doesn’t bother me. I also mentioned that, on occasion, I’ve smoked cigars and had a bad period of pipe smoking pretentiousness. Most of my early smoking, though, involved alcohol and,  not surprisingly, a woman was involved, too.

The first time I remember smoking cigarettes where I actually felt like I wanted a cigarette and not because it seemed like a cool teenage thing to do, was at university and I’d been drinking. For reasons I don’t understand, in addition to copious amounts of pizza and/or nachos, when I’ve been drinking I sometimes crave a cigarette. I only remember smoking one, but that probably meant I smoked two. I then didn’t smoke again for months until alcohol was again involved.

I also dated a smoker for a while, sort of (long story requiring a novel) and I’d smoke when she smoked (again usually after drinking which was, well, read the novel).

Somewhere in there I tried Swisher Sweets cigars which are really useful for making you really sick. Use them on your friends, not on yourself.

However, when I got to Albania, my friend Eddie introduced me to “proper” cigars and Cuban cigars. I started smoking those off and on, mostly when I could afford them, for a few years.

What I discovered was that no matter how smokey a room is, no matter how many people are smoking cigarettes, if you pull out a cigar, cigarette smokers will start going “P. U.” to which I usually respond, especially if I’ve been drinking, “F. U.” (which I think is a French abbreviation for “Silence Hypocrite!” No really. Look it up.) Even in Albania, if Eddie and I started smoking cigars in a bar with cigarette smoke so thick we could barely see each other, the bar owner would suddenly open the windows to let smoke out.

I also blame Eddie for convincing me to try pipes. (For the record: He looks cool smoking them. I look pretentious.)

Eventually I lost my grandfather and grandmother to smoking. I stopped smoking cigars soon after I got married, but I still had a few tucked away that, miraculously, didn’t get moldy, so I kept them for a special occasion.

Last year, though, I lost my dad. In fact, one year ago today. For some reason, I still kept the cigars. I threw them out today. Completely crushed them up. (Two Bolivars, a Romeo y Julieta, a Cohiba and a Punch Habana). It’s the only way I can honor him now. Also, since he was living in Louisiana when he died, I’m toasting him with a mint julep.

 

Repeated Conspicuous Gluttonous Consumption

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Tonight’s post is about food and beer and gluttony. Today my sister-in-law and her husband stopped by for supper and that means this post is being written under two conditions: full and drunk.

One of the impressive things about She Who Must Be Obeyed’s family is how much food they can put away and still remain reasonably thin. Today we had a tray of sushi, a small tray of sashimi, several roll-your-own sushi rolls, and a plate of the Japanese version of cold cuts, which included fried chicken, sausage, three different kinds of shrimp, potatoes and skewered chicken. A few bottles and cans of beer were also involved. Then they brought out dessert.

I first learned about their eating prowess very early on after She Who Must Be Obeyed and I got engaged. As part of the celebration we went to a Korean Barbecue restaurant in Itoigawa—for those who don’t know what this is, it’s a place where they trick you into cooking your own food and then charge you extra. We proceeded to eat and eat and eat. I felt it important that I hold my own in order to preserve US pride and my own omnivorous reputation. I think it’s fair to say we consumed an entire cow and an entire hog each, including large portions of innards, and a handful of vegetables. They kept handing the leftovers to me and I went “Well, you know, I really shouldn’t, but I’m going to” and then ate what I was handed.

After consuming all that dead animal flesh, I’d pretty much reached the limits of my consumption ability. That’s when they said “Do you want rice or noodles?” That’s right, after all that, they intended to top off the evening with carbohydrates. (Please remember, though, that THEY cheated by giving ME all the leftovers.) I chose ishiyaki bibinba (a rice and meat dish cooked in stone bowl) and somehow managed to force it all down.

The part that still amazes me is they always eat like this. Some of my friends got to see them in action at KC Masterpiece during our US wedding. I’ve learned to pace myself better, even when it leads to constant rounds of “Don’t you like it?” “Does it taste bad?” “Do you want something else?”

The fun part is, tomorrow we’ve got fresh sashimi coming in from She Who Must Be Obeyed’s cousin’s fish shop. It means we’re going to do this all over again.

Profoundly Profound Conclusions Jumped Toward

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One of the common effects of visiting Japan on a visitor to Japan is the formation of a series of falsely profound conclusions that seem rather, well, profound: Kanji is SOOO deep. It’s like pictures. Each picture is made up of smaller pictures. It has meaning beyond its meaning. It’s SOOO much deeper than the Western alphabet. (Well, yeah, that’s kind of true, although writing with pictures is actually pre-alphabet and the easier versions of Japan’s four alphabets are slowly taking over, and, well, WHICH Western alphabet?)

Writer/Activist Arudo Debito describes this as Gush and Mush–Gush is Japan rocks; Mush is Japan sucks–and ascribes it mostly to journalists in town for a few days. In my experience, though, Gush leads to Mush.

Gush: Japan is SOOO modern; it has the fastest broadband internet connections and everything is SOOO modern.
Mush: There’s no free wi-fi except in Starbucks and the parking lot of 7-11? Japan is SOOO backward.

I personally believe this a consequence of commenting on results without understanding the causes. (Japan hasn’t needed free wi-fi because people have been surfing the net on their cellphones for over a decade and are used to the expense. They’ve been doing that because landlines were expensive. Etc.)

I bring this up because this is a common reaction to the design of Japanese houses and the way that design impacts the lifestyle of people living in them.

One of the falsely profound conclustions is that Japanese families are closer because they all sit together in one room. Rather than having central air, Japanese rooms are heated and cooled as necessary. “This is SOOO much more civilized than the west and brings families closer because everyone is gathered together under the kotatsu and can talk and share values. This is SOOO much better than the selfish isolationist Westerners who sit in different rooms surfing the internet. Also, it’s SOOO much more energy efficient to only heat the room you’re in rather than waste energy on the rooms you’re not using. West bad. Japan good. I love Japan!” (Gush.)

There’s a lot to unpack in that, but I’ll start with a general tendency for the Japanese to build crappier houses—partly because of earthquakes and partly because the value of land is the majority of the cost of building a house. This leads to a lack of insulation, especially on older houses, and a lack of central air. The only way to heat and cool a room is to buy a heater and an air conditioner for that room. This means it’s cheaper to heat only one room.

As for the notion it’s more energy efficient, I don’t believe it. The one room may be warm, but at least one wall is uninsulated and is up against an unheated hallway or room. For example, in winter, my in-laws hang out in one room. That room has a flimsy sliding door that bleeds heat and energy into a hallway that’s so cold that going to the restroom just down the hall feels like going to an outhouse (albeit one with a heated toilet seat that washes and dries your backside.) In summer, you can feel the heat and humidity from the hallway bleeding in through the door, requiring the air conditioner to work all the time.

As for Kotatsus, well they are great until one’s nether regions start baking. Also, because the kotatsu is baking already stinky feet, I’ve been told that I’m lucky I have no sense of smell. As one of my friends said to the comment that the kotatsu is great “So is insulation! So is central heating!”

Also, that “heating only one room is SOOO awesome” conclusion changes by the middle of winter as the person is huddled under a kotatsu and wrapped in blankets: “I can’t believe my coffee table is heated but my apartment is not. I hate Japan!” (Mush.)

Also, although everyone’s together in the same, they are watching TV whilst teenagers surf the net on their phones. At times, it’s no closer than being stuck with people on a crowded train.

Small and Painful Mat Furniture

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For those who dismissed my psychic and omen reading ability as mere pessimism: Today we had an hour long blackout because of wind and discovered Mother of She Who Must Be Obeyed needs a second surgery because national health care doctors don’t listen to patients. She’s doing well but her return home will now be delayed, disrupting the lives of quite a few people.

Proof that I’m almost human completed, let’s whine a little.

The only thing I hate about visiting my in-laws is their furniture. It’s designed for small, flexible people with good knees. I am large, not flexible and have bad knees (hence the lack of flexibility).

The living/family/dining room is a tatami mat room just off the kitchen. My in-laws, kids and She Who Must Be Obeyed have little problem sitting seiza or lotus, but for me I have to sit side saddle and support my weight with my arms, or sneak up against the wall or hutch to find back support. My in-laws do provide an arm chair that looks like an office chair that’s been cut off just under the seat. It’s more comfortable than sitting on the mats, but I can only sit with my knees up. It’s a bit like sitting on an easy chair with the foot rest stuck up. It’s fun at first, but it either induces gradual knee pain or recurring nap attacks.

Eating dinner involves me sitting side saddle and trying to sit straight enough to eat without dropping food all over my legs or the floor. The taller table, which reaches to the middle of my calves, allows me to get my knees just under, but the larger table, which is shorter, doesn’t have room for my knees, making eating a meal an experience in contortion and yoga. They have a back room which is more western style, complete with proper sofas.

Your zen koan for today’s meditation: What is an improper sofa?

Once again, however, they are a bit short for prolonged loafing. The main problem is that despite my preferences for being alone, when I’m at the in-laws I do feel compelled to stay with the family and, at minimum, practice Japanese. (My brother-in-law, though, just heads off to an upstairs room and disappears for most of his stays. I’m getting to that stage, albeit slowly.)

Also, if I have any work and/or writing to do, I end up with the laptop on my lap, but at an odd angle (or I have to put my legs at an odd angle.)

By the time I return home from a week at the in-laws, my knees and back are sore even if I’ve been keeping up on my exercises and stretching. (Some other day I’ll write about the weight I put on from the heavy eating and drinking forced upon me.)

I bring all this up because it’s possible Mother of She Who Must Be Obeyed may no longer be able to sit on tatami and this will require a lot of rethinking and redesigning of the house and her habits. I may have a few suggestions for how to change things.

Psychic Omens of the Vacation Apocalypse

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A short one today as I recover from travel and hope I can tether through my phone.

Today the oldest and I traveled to the in-laws house but before we left, I got to show off my psychic powers. Before that, though, I have to talk about the omens.

First Omen: after a hot but relatively dry summer, the day we were scheduled to travel typhoon 11 decided to arrive and dump a bunch of rain on us.

Second Omen: the rain that arrived was in a storm front, depicted in red (bad) and maroon (damned bad) on the weather map, that followed our exact path straight into Niigata.

Third Omen: several bullet train tracks had already been shut down.

Fourth Omen: it was raining hard enough that the drain on our balcony began to back flow in a new way. It didn’t flow onto the balcony, but it was noisy, as if it were mocking our attempts to travel during a typhoon.

Fifth Omen: about an hour before we left, the rain began to stop but it was raining just hard enough that we would need to carry umbrellas. However, as we left our apartment, the rain had become little more than random sprinkles and we didn’t actually need umbrellas. My psychic powers—which some say is simply pessimism—kicked in and I told our oldest to bring her umbrella anyway. I told her that about halfway to the station the rain would fall and fall hard.

Sixth Omen: Sure enough, almost exactly halfway to station we had to rush to get our umbrellas out as the sky opened up in downpour that left me soaked from the middle of my thighs down to my toes. The joke here is that once we were at the station, we’d be indoors or on trains the entire rest of the trip, meaning we no longer needed the umbrellas and they were just dead weight.

After that the trip went pretty well. The only real problems we had were the storm had swung to the Japan Sea and the wind slowed down our express train from Echigo-Yuzawa to Naoetsu. Luckily we were able to catch our local train and are now happily resting at the in-laws.

Seventh Omen: Too happily.

Manners Little Devils and the Moveable Curse

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Legends has it that identical twins have some kind of secret connection that causes them–even if they’ve been separated at birth–to dress alike and marry the same kinds of people. With my sister the only secret connection was that for way too many years we didn’t like each other that much. That’s what makes today’s story very strange.

I don’t remember when this happened which means I don’t remember why were together–she was either still living at home and I was back from school or we were mysteriously back home at the same time. I also don’t remember what we were eating, but I think it was chili because the pan was on the table. Whatever it was and whyever it was, one of us, probably me, let loose a very light, I swear it was very light, belch. This prompted our mother to say something to the effect of “I guess I raised a couple kids without any manners.”

My sister and I looked at each other and the devils over my shoulders and both the angel and the devil over hers connected and without saying anything we both started violating every manner we could think of and it pretty much escalated.

We put our elbows on the table; gripped our spoons in our fists; shoveled in food; ate with our mouths open; talked with our mouths full; slurped; belched; ate out of the pan; put food back in the pan; ate off other plates; ate with our fingers; licked our fingers; licked our plates. In other words, we pretty much violated the 5th commandment about honouring thy mother and since she looked about ready to violate the 6th it was clear that our days might not be long upon the land. She still has not forgiven us.

In the end we proved a number of things:
1) We knew what manners to violate which meant we did in fact have a few table manners.
2) Mom had her hands full with us when we were growing up.
3) Mom should have been more specific about which manners we’d been raised without.
4) We are terrible people.
5) We stopped just in time.

Mom responded by suddenly saying something that sounded like: Spero vo et filii vestri, idem facere. (No really, she spoke Latin) which I think is a curse that means “I hope your children act the same as you.”

Our oldest and youngest have done a pretty good job holding up their part of the curse, although with their own unique spin. The oldest is good at doing what she wants until the last possible minute and if you give her a minute she’ll suddenly forget how to turn off electronics which is her excuse to continue using them until I walk up and hold the power button for five seconds or pull the batteries out (which is all to explain why she’s currently washing dishes at 11:25 p.m.). The youngest is good at delivering the right phrase right before supper that angers She Who Must Be Obeyed. (The phrase is different each time.)

The only thing we can do is move the curse on down the line.

The Application is Half the Battle

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For reasons I still don’t fully understand, when I was in high school a few hundred years ago or so, I received an application from Oral Roberts University. I hadn’t requested one and still don’t know how they got my name. Although I didn’t apply, I was impressed by the lengthy application form, which I remember being somewhere around 10 or 12 pages and included things like personal Christian testimony and pledges to have no fun whatsoever for four years. (Something like that.) It was also the first application I’d ever seen that required a photo.

Little did I know, this application was pretty much an omen for my future.

When most normal people apply for jobs, they fill in a one or two page application, turn in a one or two page resume and sit through an interview with “What are your strengths?” “In what ways are you a moron?” etc. In my case, with the exception of some summer work, every job I’ve ever had, and one I didn’t, have involved lengthy applications and application processes.

First was for the Air Force which involved exams, physicals, repeat physicals, physical fitness tests, pupil dilation and marching about the square shouting orders. Oh, and six weeks of getting yelled at by men in campaign hats.

When I decided not to go into the Air Force, I applied for the Peace Corps. Once again, I had a huge application that included authorizing a basic background check and then was subjected to a series of physical examinations. The only problems I had involved my ears. For my initial physical, the nurse checked my ears and ran out of the room screaming and praying. I won’t get into details, but the praying was followed but a thorough cleaning. (More on why this was necessary later.) Despite that cleansing, I still failed the hearing test which put my application on hold.

Eventually I tracked down a professor at Kansas State who offered free hearing checks if the testee allowed students who intended to be doctors and/or mad scientists to conduct the test whilst the professor supervised. I was then taken to a dark room in the basement of either Lafene Student Health Center or Leasure Hall where I failed the hearing test again. The professor did a quick survey of my ears, which involved nearly pulling them of toward the back of my head and declared I had weird ears.

More specifically, rather than a straight ear canal, mine curves slightly. This means, um, ear matter doesn’t always exit the way it is supposed to and can build up if I don’t take precautions. That’s what had frightened the nurse in the first test. To make matters even more complicated, because of my weird ears, when I put on headphones, the way they sit over my ears causes them to partially block my ears which is why I failed the second test.

The professor was giddy at the thought he could now give his students a chance test my hearing via bone conduction. This meant using devices that attached just behind my ears and sent sound vibrations through my skull to my internal ear. Oddly, it sounded just the same as using headphones. Using this method, I passed and was medically cleared for the Peace Corps. (Since then I’ve learned how to better position headphones during hearing tests to keep them from closing off my ear canal; also, since I passed the Air Force hearing test, either the headphones fit better or the Air Force has lower standards.)

The last long application was for the JET Programme which involved 15 or 20 pages of information and a personal essay and more physicals. (All of which I passed.) It also required a photo be included, which apparently almost caused me to fail because it gave the impression I was very serious. Either way, it got me to Japan.

 

 

The Old and The New High Places and Fear

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Today the oldest and I both had the day off (well, sort of, I had to do some “work” in the morning, for six hours, no really, six hours, officially). Because of this, and despite the heat, we mustered up the energy to go down to Tokyo and visit Tokyo Sky Tree, which is the tallest tower in the world and, for now, the second tallest structure in the world.

Tokyo Sky Tree is just a short walk from Asakusa and the Asahi Brewery Headquarters (which is designed and colored to look like a tall glass of beer) and the Asahi Beer Hall which is famous for, well, let’s just say I had to explain to our oldest that it was designed to look like a hibachi and flame but apparently no one told Philippe Starck that the design looked like the standard Japanese cartoon depiction of poop.

The adventure, as all things tend to do in Japan, involved an hour waiting in line. Oddly we didn’t complain as, unlike Tokyo Disneyland/line, the wait was indoors and air conditioned. Once we had a ticket, we were hustled to an elevator and whisked up to 350 meters (1,148 feet). At this stage, there are restaurants and shops and a ticket counter for getting tickets up to the highest deck. I splurged and we were whisked up another elevator, this one with a glass top and glass doors to 440 meters (1,443 feet). At this point, to get back down, you have to walk up what’s basically a glass tube to get to 450 meters (1,476 feet) and the down elevators.

Oddly, at this point, I wasn’t having too many issues with heights.

The elevator takes you back down to the 350 meter deck and you then have to walk down to 340 meters (1,115 feet). At this level, which is the bottom of the three level lower deck, there’s an area with a glass floor. Our oldest walked out on it with no problems. In my case, however, the different parts of my brain had a short chat. My logical/reasoning brain, as small as it is, pointed out that there was nothing to fear as not only was the floor well designed, there was a actually a second floor below it. My lizard-brain responded with “Gyahhh! No! No! No! Danger! Bad! Fall Bad! Splat Bad! Glass fail! People fall! People die! People stupid! Me smart! You die!”

I took a step on to the glass, took a picture, then stepped back off as my logical/reasoning brain started listening to my lizard-brain and realized that the reason there was a second floor was because it was possible for the first floor to fail.

Part of the problem was there were dozens of people around and on the glass floor. If I stood in place trying to get my courage and focus built up, I was constantly getting jostled. If I could focus, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem. For example, I no longer have problems with the skywalk in the NS Building in Shinjuku because I’m able to relax and focus.

I crossed around to the other side of the glass floor near the window determined to try it again, but the view and the realization we were hanging over nothing made even my logical/reasoning brain shout “Fly, you fool! Fly! Er, I mean FLEE not FLY because FLY is totally what you want to avoid! Although, technically it’s FALL not FLY.” Of course, my escape was cut off by a little old lady who refused to move which meant I had to listen to my logical/reasoning brain snap and start comparing the glass floor to the Moon Door in Game of Thrones.

Eventually we went back down to the ground level and had lunch. Then, since our oldest had never visited Kaminarimon and Senso-ji, we took a brief side trip down Nakamise Street to eat agemanju or deep-fried sweet bean pastries (which, against all reason, are among my favorite sweets in Japan).

Unfortunately, we too hot and tired at that point to enjoy the temple, so we packed it in and went home. Luckily we woke up before our stop.