We made it. We’ve now been traveling and waiting in airports for over 24 hours straight, so this will be a brief post, and a possibly somewhat incoherent one.
We are now comfortably ensconced in the Asakusa View hotel in Tokyo. Our room is on the side of the building opposite the one we stayed in last year, so we have a different view. This view includes the large temple whose name I’m too tired to remember even though the bellhop told it to us a little while ago, a five-story pagoda which houses some of the remains of Buddha, and the Asahi corporate HQ building which is famous in part for an odd decoration that was supposed to be a flame but looks more like a golden tadpole. I’ll post a photo of the view when I can take one; it’s raining and in the evening now so I don’t think a photo would come out well.
The plane flight (the second one, that is) was about 10 hours long. Neither Tracie nor I remember last year’s flight from Seattle to Tokyo being that long, so either our memories do not serve us or the air has become more viscous or something. In any case it was awfully long. Sometime during the eighth hour I became ill and made use of the little bag provided in my seat-back pocket. I don’t know whether it was motion sickness or something I ate but I suspect the latter. I felt better by the time we landed and I feel basically fine now, so I’m going to assume it was a transitory thing that is now behind us.
We were planning to head out to the nearest vending machine and to the grocery store down the block, but we’re both rather exhausted so I’m not sure yet what we’ll do this evening. Tomorrow we meet up with our friends Richard and Rafael.
Is it the Senso Ji Temple perhaps?