Japan – Tokyo/Karuizawa, Day two – Kyle

the day ended on an upswing. i feel like i need to start there because boy, oh boy, did i fuck up our morning.

well, first the fucking children did. mouse is currently waking up at 2-3 am because 10 month-olds just do that. (how are there a million sleep regressions? sleep is necessary. catch up, babies.) i usually let him babble until he falls back asleep but that’s not a great idea with the bulldozer/miss fritter snoozing away in the same room. someone needed to walk that baby up and down the halls. since i’d been up every 30 minutes with shin/calf/foot cramps that job fell to the daddy guy.

but of course, when he was ready to get thing-two back into bed thing-one woke up. day two started at 345am. hurray!

on the bright side we had plenty of time to shower and get ready for the day. we had an amazing breakfast by the water.

we realized that with all the extra time we could be leisurely about touring the imperial palace before catching our train…and we’re back to feeling footloose and fancy free.

that is until we notice that the damn palace is closed because of a holiday.

so.

we now have three hours to kill before our train. we decide to stroll around the area and find a park for the kiddos. the park was the oldschool kind, with metal slides that burn, lots of mud, and special japanese ants that bit the shit out of me. we were over it. all. it was time to dick around at the station and bask in the air conditioning.

as we’re slinking back to the hotel to grab our things i casually ask derek if the train tickets are with our passports. they are! awesome. let’s just make sure.

where the fuck are our bloody passports?

seriously.

where the fuck are our bloody passports?

i had put them under the stroller. they were not under the stroller.

i’m hyperventilating. i realize that i must have not secured them and i didn’t tell derek they were under the stroller he was pushing so he didn’t know to keep an eye on them.  i can only blame the sleep deprivation.  (normally, i would describe myself as a passport nazi. but nazis are real again. so i can no longer be flippant about them.  gotta think of a new way to say i am strict and insane about things…tangent over.)

we began to run. like, really run. run the kind of run that makes you look deranged.  well, because we were deranged.

we retraced our steps back to the park. nada. we decided to split up.  i took mac/the excavator and went to look for some park police or official and derek took mouse to retrace the route we took to the park.

i went back to furiously running and half crying/half yelling at people to see if anyone spoke enough english to direct me to the police.  finally (after being the most obnoxious kind of tourist) an incredibly kind young woman who understood me took me to a police box.

and in it were a police officer and a biker going through our passport folio.

i cannot describe the relief i felt in that moment. i defaulted to the furious and embarrassing bowing i’m becoming known for. the biker took off and i was left with a 50ish police officer who did not look happy with me.  he wanted to know where my husband was.  i began to get bristly about gender equality and shit, until i realized that i look almost nothing like my passport photo from 11 years ago and bug’s passport photo is of him at six months old. uh-oh.

i pulled up pictures of derek on my phone and showed him the resemblance, but he still seemed very upset that he wasn’t with me.  he spoke no english and i speak just enough japanese to count to 100. google translate has been helpful for individual words, but not enough for us to understand each other.  i finally was able to ask him to call the hotel we had been staying at and i was able to speak to the concierge and explain what was happening just as derek was frantically approaching her in person.

after about 10 minutes of them conversing and (i have to assume) exchanging irritation at these dumbass americans i was able to leave with our documents.

(i’m always embarassed when i travel abroad and don’t know much of the language. never enough to really study it, but sheepish.  but wow. to have to rely so completely on other people knowing my language while i’m a guest in their country was truly mortifying and shaming.  i resolve to do better.)

i run back the mile or so to the hotel (fine, i run/pant/walk) where i look like such a complete sweaty disaster that i’m immediately given towels and once again embarrass an entire room full of people.  honestly, without the cute kids i’m not sure anyone would talk to me at this point.

everyone is happy when we finally recombobulate and get the fuck out of the hotel. and after the utter mess of the morning we’ve eaten up most of our leisure time and can’t do the station restaurant i was looking forward to. but that turns out to be ok because i have zero inclination to explore the complete and overwhelming crush of people that make up tokyo station. i assume it’s my lack of understanding of the language and customs, but grand central station looks like a well organized, and peaceful place in comparison.

but we still need food.  derek spends way too much time trying to understand what’s in the bento boxes before i remind him that our children are about to lose their shit and he best just grab the one that looks the funniest. i grab fruit and cheese and hunker down with my stolen bread from the breakfast buffet and some peanut butter.

after all this getting on the train and getting to our new hotel in karuizawa is a fucking breeze. almost literally. the hotel is in the mountains and is significantly cooler, less populated, and peaceful.

thing-one naps! thing-two naps! after they wake up we go for dinner. we find green noodles. doc/elsa hasn’t been this happy in days.  see you fucking later tokyo.