HOWDY FOLKS

Nate here, sorry it has been so long since you all have heard anything from our neck of the woods, lots has happened in the last few days, so settle back for a nice long reading. I believe that the last time we chatted we had yet to visit Toyko, so here it is: Leaving our honourable fallen (shan), Ian Dane and I grabbed ourselves tickets on the bullet train bound for Tokyo. It will never cease to amaze me how easy it is to get from place to place in this country, especially if you have in your possession, a JR pass, unlimited travel on any public transport associated with the East Japan rail company...which is a SHIT TON! anywho, we got tickets, boarded the train and settled in for the hours ride from Utsonomyia to down town Tokyo. Now, I am aware that this may come as a bit of an obveous statement, but DAMN SON, them bullet trains are fast like no man's business. Once we started moving, we were all impressed with how fast the train was gliding the miles away...and then we got to a straight stretch and out of first gear...over the next 30 seconds the increasing highte of my eyebrows were directly proportional to the acceleration of the train. Thankfully we leveled out to a steady speed just before my eyebrows vanished into the desert of my scalp. Other then that, there was no real excitement this train ride, several stops to vaguely pronounceable places later and, Hell's yeah, we were in Tokyo. Departing the train, our little minds reeled with the infinite possibilities now before us when it suddenly hit us: we had absolutely no idea how to get out of the train station. Fifteen minutes and three different sets of directions later and we emerged from the east entrance of the Tokyo station. I have no idea about the others, but at that point the complete vastness of this creature that was Tokyo started to make itself clear to me, North, South, East or West, movement, activity, silver matalic, gleaming life beating, flowing, pulsing, pumping gliding, this way, that was, every way, no way, there was no escape. I admit that in this moment culture shock hit with the force of a freight train, rarely have i felt to small, and i was just that, in every since of the word, i was small. I allowed this experience to wash over me until the growling in my stomach brought me back to ground zero and the truth that no matter how small i found myself suddenly feeling, i still had an immensely large hunger that was not going to wait on my existential crisis and so, exercising our group ability of low level telepathy, we all went in search of food. As we circled from one restaurant window to another, the question quickly became not "where do we want to eat?" But rather "which little shack are we going to give the privilege of assaulting our wallets in exchange for a smell of food?". Our die was cast, we had chosen, and as we walked to our culinary fate on the second floor of this establishment I wondered just how bad we could get over charged for the meal that we were about to have. Images of clubs we could have gone to, adventures we could have had, temples we would now never visit flashed briefly through my mind as we found our seats and set about deciding our private financial suicide. A young woman with an electronic pad took our orders then returned to her tasks, which included serving food delivered to the second floor via elevator, cleaning the finished dishes and returning them on a different elevator to the kitchen below.This amused me for a time, watching her mechanical precision taking orders, cleaning, serving, all without missing a step. And then our food came, oh sweet mirciful God, a bowl of noodles in broth the approximate size of BIG with a side of rice and eight dumplings with dipping sauce for the modest damage of about eight dollars...we could not decide which to be shocked about first, the size of our meal, or the unbelievable price. As we did not have enough jaw to drop over both of them, and seeing as our mouths were already open...we decided to fill them first, ogle later. For those of you who know me also know that i can put it away for a smaller person, i have even been known to almost eat myself into a coma, and i have no shame in saying that half an hour later, not myself, nor anyone at the table could eat everything in front of them. Both very fat and very happy, the three of us staggered out into the rainy world in search of a place to sit and settle into pleasant unconsciousness. One quarter hour of listing from street to street we found an out of the way park with semi dry, semi covered seating on the banks of some dirty little river and parked ourselves. As most of the blood in my body migrated to the mammoth task of digesting the mountain of food in my belly, my mind wandered back to two encounters that greatly moved me that day, the first was of a man methodical sweeping leaves off of the side walk with a wicker broom. Our host father Joey told us that everything to these people was an art form, this was no exception. The man took time with each and every leaf, carefully sweeping it exactly where he wanted it before moving on to the next leaf. Time wise, this was not at all efficient, but to witness the single minded intensity with which this man made such simple task the entire purpose of his existence in that moment, it was beautiful to watch. The second glimpse into the heart and soul of these people had come as we were search for food in a little back alley. A man in uniform, most likely a police officer, was dutifully praying at a shrine, repeatedly bowing his head in supplicated respect. " Even here" i thought "even in the most modern city in the world, in a place where someone can go their entire lives with out seeing the stars or a real sunrise, even in a world where mechanical perfection is the expected norm, even here, maybe especial here, there is room for a power greater than man, there is room for spirits, miracles and magic, and maybe ever room for God to squeeze in at the back.
Nate