Blogging From All Kinds of Places

My dedication to blogging knows no bounds!  I am drafting this post while on a Shinkansen, a high speed bullet train in Japan.  I came to Tokyo for a last minute business trip this week and am en route back to my hotel after a busy two days' of meetings and negotiations.  I should be using this time on the train to sleep, however, the bright (and I mean uncontrollably, floridly bright) fluorescent lights in the train make it nigh impossible for me to get any sleep.  But this is not a fact that seems to affect about 95% of my fellow passengers, who are all dozing away peacefully while sitting upright?!

We have been here since Wednesday and will return home on Friday afternoon.  This is the first time that Michael and I have left Lola at home with her caregivers, Jovie and Lily, without one of us present.  We were really reluctant to do it, but thought that if there was ever a good opportunity to try this out and get a little time away, this would be it.   Unfortunately, between both of our work schedules, this trip has not been about leisure or couple time at all!  We miss Lola terribly, but before leaving installed/activated cameras around our apartment so we can see them and communicate if we want to, and we are getting lots of updates in the form of pictures and videos.  

It has been fun to have company on my business trip and I am so grateful Michael was able to accompany me, especially because I was traveling solo without any coworkers.  The last time we had a trip like this just the two of us was when we were at the Rosewood in Beijing, before Lola was born!  I think I was about 5 months pregnant at the time.

I had a fantastic flight to Tokyo from Hong Kong, flying the direct route that lands in Haneda (way more convenient airport than Narita) in first class.  I usually never fly first class for work; this was just a fluke when the price between business and first was practically the same and this was the last seat available that was not economy.  I have only had the chance to fly first class once, from Hong Kong to San Francisco, way back when I could burn my points in a much more frivolous manner.  I am sad to report that on the daytime short haul flight from Hong Kong to Japan, you do not get pajamas nor do they fry up your eggs in an actual skillet, however, it is still an immensely pleasurable experience because your seat is really more like a little suite with room for two or three.  Michael came and sat across from me for a little bit while I enjoyed my breakfast and it was great.

In Tokyo, we were picked up at the airport in a Lexus sedan (Michael was so disappointed, as he was hoping for a brand new Mercedes S500 or a Jaguar) and then upgraded to a bigger room when we checked in at the hotel.  We decided to try the Mandarin hotel this time but I have to say, we have been finding the experience a bit disappointing.  It is extremely expensive, the dining menu feels limited, there is no swimming pool, and in a typical-for-Japan-but-otherwise-bizarre-situation, their sauna and jacuzzi are only available between the hours of 6 and 9 am?!  The Palace remains my favorite hotel in Tokyo but it was sold out on our days.

I immediately changed and rushed off to my office for meetings, and Michael settled in for work.  I didn’t return back to the hotel until nearly 1 am, and didn’t go to sleep until after 2 am.  Every time I am here in a business setting I find myself exasperated/amused at how counter-intuitive and inefficient things are.  Just as an example, the instructions that my office gave me, detailing the exit route if I was stuck at work after hours, was mind-boggling and dizzying, with multiple colors, words in every direction, and lots of pictures and arrows and dots.  I should have taken a picture.  I wanted a printout of a few agreements and it took so long that I just gave up on the second copy.

This morning, I was back up at 8:30am for more meetings as well as a local business trip (hence the shinkansen)!  I haven’t been on a bullet train in years.  I truly admire the cleanliness and promptness of Japanese public transportation.  The line that I am taking runs every 10 minutes (!) and is incredibly smooth, quiet and fast.  The bathroom on the train is itself a marvel – clean, not odorous, and even equipped with a Japanese toilet!!  Also incredible to me is the fact that the train leaves with barely any fanfare.  There are no loud announcements or warnings – when the second hand sweeps across the 12, the train doors seal shut and the train immediately starts pulling out of the station.  This country does not tolerate tardiness. I would definitely miss many trains if I lived here.

Despite the late hour of my return to Tokyo, I am determined to go out to dinner.  Tokyo is the second metropolis that never sleeps – so I am returning to Tokyo with all my work stuff in tow and going straight to a yakiniku (grilled meat, yummmmm) restaurant in Ginza to meet Michael for a late dinner.  I find Tokyo particularly romantic at night, more than practically any other city in the world, and that may or may not be due 100% to the influence of the movie “Lost in Translation,” but I like to think it is also due to the allure of the dark, dimly lit, intimate, tiny dining and drinking spaces that are found in little nooks and crannies all over the sprawling city. More than any other city I have been in, in Tokyo I feel like I own, just for that particular moment on that particular night, a little piece of my own delightful space in an utterly foreign and alien place.