Our trip is at its end.

We arrived in Austin last night. Today has been one of jet lag and travel recovery misery. Jet lag is part of the yin-yang of international travel. The enjoyment of spending time with your granddaughter is balanced by the pain you suffer once home.

Our last Shinkansen ride brought us back to Tokyo, this time to Ueno station. UT (the University of Tokyo) is located near there, in the Meguro District. Cassady’s apartment is nearby as well. We stayed in a roykan within walking distance of her, and on Saturday we visited the Komaba campus where she will be studying the next two years. UT has five major campuses, with Komaba housing Arts and Sciences.

Although I have traveled extensively in Japan, I do not profess to have deep insight into the culture or the people. As a westerner (and a Texan, for God’s sake), Asia is blithely enigmatic.

There are certainly cultures in the world that strive to remain apart. The Japanese, for all of their western trappings, do not have to work hard to remain distinguishable. The radical differences in language are, in part, responsible. Although English is commonly seen in Japan, most of it is related to the perplexing English tag lines, slogans, and non sequiturs that Japanese marketing whizzes concoct. Otherwise, Japan is for the Japanese.

Okonomiyaki is among Japan’s gifts to the world (along with soba, udon, ocha, anime, and Godzilla). Translated the word means “fried, your choice.” In practice Okonomiyaki is a fritter-like concoction of whatever is at hand – seafood, vegetables, pork. Hiroshima is famous for its particular style of Okonomiyaki, and we spent an evening in the Okonomimura (Okonomiyaki village) delving into the intricacies of this local cuisine.

Let me begin with an apology. You did not expect an article on toilets, I know. But after Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I decided to interject some humor, some levity, before I address issues about which it is impossible to laugh.

The Japanese know high-tech. But of all of their technological contributions, nothing comes close to their bathrooms.

Here is my first example. I travel constantly, and probably spend 100 nights or more annually somewhere in some hotel working on some project. Among my pet peeves is the bathroom mirror that fogs after I shower and before I can shave. Invariably I am scrambling for a dry towel, then trying to wipe away the moisture before it reappears. Of course it fogs again as soon as I place razor on skin.

We began the day in Naha with lattes, a pastry translated as “the bomb,” and a skip across the parking lot to a tiny religious site tucked in by the port. As part of the Ryūkyū kingdom until “assimilated” by Japan during the Meiji, there are celebrated remnants of Ryūkyū religion here. However, my uneducated eye can’t tell Ryūkyū from Buddhist from Shinto, although the differences between these Okinawan shrines and those on Honshu are noticeable. We came upon a group of older people placing offerings at the shrine, with the woman reading from a printed script. Apparently there is an attempt here to resurrect the Ryūkyū culture as we see in Hawaii with its native resurgence.

The sun has yet to rise here in Tokyo. We arrived at Narita around 4 PM, took the bus to the Imperial Hotel, and I collapsed into bed around 10 PM. Virginia and Cassady invaded the Ginza after dinner, but I begged off in favor of a good night’s sleep.

The Imperial Hotel is as gracious as ever. At this moment they have a display of artifacts from Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1923 masterpiece. Wright’s hotel replaced the original, built in 1890, so this is the third of the Imperial Hotels here. There are columns on display that are carved from Oya, the tuff endemic to Tochigi prefecture (where we will be visiting family at the end of the trip).

Wednesday we are off to Japan for a couple of weeks with our granddaughter. I have posted a map of our travels on the “My Journeys” page. I will try to blog from each stop, so keep up with us through this blog.

Ted