Let’s start at the beginning - this trip has an interesting start. Jake and I got a call around 9:30 the night before we were leaving to let us know our flight to Chicago had been cancelled. So we call the airlines and they tell us since our 9:50 am flight is cancelled they can get us on the 8:00 am flight instead. Ok, now our day starts a lot earlier.
So we get up and head to the airport at the crack of dawn, do all the check in stuff, head to our gate and sit down right a
cross from one of Jake’s fraternity brothers he hasn’t seen for 15 years. Small, small world! Which turns out to be great for Jake since our flight gets delayed…and delayed…at least Jake and Scott got lots of time to catch up!
We wind up getting to Chicago about when we would have gotten there with the original flight time – only to find out the flight Cricket was taking to Chicago from Cleveland to meet up with us was also cancelled! The problem with this is that Jake and I don’t have any way to get in touch with her. So I called home and asked if anyone had heard anything from Crick and no luck. Jake and I take off to Tokyo not knowing when or if Cricket is meeting us when we get there.
On the plane they give you forms to fill out for immigration and customs when you arrive in Tokyo and I am filling those out when I realize all I have is Cricket’s Tokyo phone number – not even her address. I didn’t bring it with me since I thought we would be traveling to Tokyo together! And Crick has mentioned once that Jeff offered to pick us up at the airport since three of us would have a lot of baggage to try and fit in a cab, but she never mentioned if he was coming for sure or not.
Jake and I got to Tokyo with no idea how to reach anyone (it was 2:30 in the afternoon so Jeff would be at work and not at their home phone number that I had!) and not knowing if Jeff was picking us up! I also wondered if they would let us through immigration and customs without even an address of where we were staying! Fun start! So we got though immigration – finger printed and photographed with no problem or mention of the address, got through customs ok, came out to where you meet people there to pick you up, all the people holding name signs and everything and we are totally alone in Japan! Jake looks at me and says – so what do we do now? Good question!
We decide to park our stuff and wait, since eventually we figure they will find at us the one place they know we might be and we didn’t even have to wait five minutes before Jake saw Jeff – what a great feeling! He tells us Crick got on a flight to DC and is arriving not very long after us – pretty good timing.
We collect Cricket and headed home and their house is amazing! So different from what I could describe so I will take lots of pictures so you can get a good feeling and post them later. No time for picture taking now! Cricket's dog Jackson isn’t being dropped off from daycare until 7 and Jeff has to head back to work for a conference call so we decide to head out to get some supplies and sightsee around the area a little bit. Cricket takes us to the Food Show – which I have experienced in Japan before but not Jake!
The Food Show is in the basement of a department store and is just counter after of counter of every kind of food you can think off, prepared foods, bakery items, chocolates, you name it – it goes on forever. At one end the space there is also a grocery store type of place where we loaded up on stuff for breakfast – cereal, coffee, the important stuff!
We came back home to get organized and guess what happens - Jake crashes. After about 22 hours of traveling, jet lag catches up with him!
a small watermelon with a $45 price tag. Melons are now my official benchmark for the international fruit market. Yesterday at the "American" supermarket, National Azabu in Hiroo, we spotted a $60 cantelope. Good cantelope? I'm not always good at picking a good one. We passed up $1 cantelopes at Harris Teeter the day before we left because we didn't think we'd be able to finish one.
