Judy and Dustin Visit

Two weeks after my family left Japan, my girlfriend Judy and Dustin, my roommate from Taiwan, arrived. They were set to arrive in Tokyo's Narita airport. That same day, I took a four-hour bullet train ride from Hiroshima and arrived in Tokyo to discover that it was snowing. Apparently, it was the first time it had snowed in Tokyo this year and it was much earlier than in previous years. So, I checked into my hotel, waited around for a while and then made my way out to Narita. They were scheduled to arrive at 7pm, so I arrived at 6pm. I knew something was wrong when I looked at the arrivals board and the most recent flight going through customs was a 4:10. Since the snow was unnexpected, the airport was delaying many of the flights. Judy and Dustin were circling the airport for several hours, though I didn't know this. At 9:45, there was a general announcement that all flights that had not yet landed were being redirected. I asked three different people at three different counters, but no one knew if her flight had actually landed or not. The main problem with this was that the last train leaving Narita (nearly an hour outside of Tokyo) was at 10:30. At 10:45, Judy called me from another passenger's cell phone to say she had landed at Haneda Airport, a smaller domestic airport south of the city. Stuck, I decided to take a taxi, which turned out to be much cheaper than I expected. I met Judy at the hotel at 4am and we crashed until 11 the next day.


The next day, Dustin, Judy, and I headed to the Ryogoku Kokugukikan to watch the final day of the January sumo tournament (Hatsu Basho). As my loyal readers will recall, I'm quite a die-hard sumo fan now. I spent most of the time trying to explain the sport to Judy and Dustin, who were surprisingly intrigued by it. It was a great day, but we were all incredibly tired. Afterwards, we jetted around to some semi-famous locations and had some dynamite sushi at a "sushi-go-round" as my Dad calls them (kaitenzushi for you Japanese speakers). The next morning, which was quite blustery and frigid, we visited the famous Asakusa Shrine and then hopped on a bullet train to Hiroshima.


The first night in Kure we had a nice dinner with Mel and Jason and then the following day with an assortment of other AETs in Kure. Mel and Jason were kind enough to put Dustin up while he was in town, and he was quite impressed with their kindness and warmth, as are we all.
Then came the so-called purpose of the trip. Dustin and I have been planning to bring some Taiwanese students to Japan this summer for a tour and we wanted to use this time to explore possible venues. Somewhere along the way, I mentioned Shikoku as a possible place and that ended up sticking. So we all trouped over to Shikoku on the ferry and then caught a bus to Kotchi, on the Pacific coast. This turned out to be a large tactical error. For starters, Kotchi is a boring, lifeless city, very similar to many other Japanese cities. In addition, the Shikoku transportation system is quite old and inconvenient, so to go anywhere takes a tremendous amount of time. We spent most of our time in Shikoku travelling and when we weren't travelling, we were planning to travel. At some point, we decided to scrap the whole Shikoku thing.


We returned to Kure and realized Dustin would be leaving on Monday morning. He wanted to go into Hiroshima, so we said goodbye on Saturday. It was great to have him here and it really made me miss having him as a roommate. Dustin is a lot of fun and has a unique spirit. He brightens up any room he enters. He is also a tremendous photographer, as the pictures above and below this caption will attest. The above is Kotchi Castle at dusk and below is a siloutte of a man fishing at dawn. While we were in Kotchi, Dustin decided to make the best of it and got up at 4am to go trapsing around the area taking photos. This is one of the best I've seen. You'll have to ask him about his adventures that morning - he tells it better.


After Dustin left, Judy and I still had a week left together. On the Saturday that Dustin left for Hiroshima, we had a the regular crew (Mel, Jason, Brandon, Asuka, Simon, Sally, and Masato) over for Chinese New Year's dinner. I think I cooked chili, which isn't very Chinese, but it feeds a lot of people. Afterwards, we all went out to Karaoke (I think our third trip to Shidax that week) and everyone showed off their singing voices (or not-so-singing-voices in my case).
Though Judy and I went up to Hiroshima and saw the Peace Park and went out with Noriko to explore Kure and Diamond City (a huge shopping mall), we spent most of the time chilling and hanging out. I was so happy to have her here and it was great living with her, though only for a little while. She enjoyed Japan a lot, and she's planning to come back for an extended visit in July, which will make the end of my time here that much more enjoyable.
So that was the trip. After those two weeks, it took me nearly another two weeks to get back into the groove of work and not really working again. I miss Judy terribly, but I'm encouraged by the prospect of seeing her again in May when I'll lead a group of fellow AETs on a tour of southern Taiwan. Yay!