Category: Life

It could have been worse

Diane and I went to the Legion of Honor today to see their current exhibition, Japanese Prints in Transition.

There was a pickup truck overloaded with stuff ahead of me on the Highway 17 on-ramp. I stayed far behind it on the ramp, and wasn’t surprised when pieces of cardboard and other junk started blowing off it when it accelerated at the end of the ramp. I was able to stop without anything hitting me (including the cars behind me!); the truck pulled off to the side, and I drove on; all was well. Or so I thought.

We’d been to the Hagi Uragami Museum last month in Japan; it has a room devoted to ukiyo-e (floating world woodblock) prints, but it was closed on the day we visited. We made up for it today at the Legion; there were six rooms of woodblock prints. There was even one room of woodblock erotica!

We wanted to get out of the city before rush hour, so we skipped the rest of the museum and headed to the car to drive home.

We didn’t get very far, though, before the dashboard went “beep” and said that my front left tire was dangerously low – 19psi. I guess I hadn’t completely avoided the debris from the truck after all!

I found a nearby gas station with, wonder of wonders, a free air pump, and filled the tire. But I could only get it up to 30psi and it started to go down again, so we got off the highway and went to Wheel Works in Daly City. They were too busy to fix or replace the tire, but they did pump it up to 45psi so I could get back to Los Gatos even with the leak. By the time I got to Wheel Works in Los Gatos, the pressure was down to about 35psi. They said they’d be able to take care of the tire in the morning, so I left the car with them and we walked the mile-and-a-half home.

I guess I should have given that truck even more room!

Tokyo in the Morning, Los Gatos at Night

The view from our room at the Mesm Hotel was dominated by skyscrapers at night – but during the day, Hamiriku Gardens was the center of attention.

There was an entrance only fifteen minutes’ walk from the hotel, so we decided to explore the gardens this morning before leaving for Narita Airport and home. It was surprisingly rich in history; it was a feudal lord’s residence and later, a palace for the Tokugawa shoguns and then the Imperial Family, who donated it to the City of Tokyo right after WWII.

There weren’t many flowers in bloom today, but the park is overwhelmingly beautiful in its greenness. It’s well-maintained, and it looks like they do it the old-fashioned way, without power tools.

There are some statues in the park, like this one – it’s not a Minuteman, though that was my first thought when I saw it from a distance. It was installed to commemorate the Meiji Emperor’s 25th wedding anniversary.

The park has four teahouses, a sluice (still used to control the flow of water between Tokyo Bay and Shioiri-no-ike, the tidal pond in the center of the park), several bridges, and even a couple of old duck hunting areas, complete with blinds.

You can’t ignore the city that surrounds the park, but the two are surprisingly complementary if you find the right view.

The park also has a 300-year-old pine which is a must-see – unfortunately, we had to leave before we found it because it was time to go home.

We returned to the hotel, checked out, walked about 10 minutes to the Daimon Station, and hopped onto the Asakusa Line which took us directly to Narita in just over an hour for 1414 yen (about $9) each – much faster and cheaper than the Limousine Bus or a taxi would have been.

We left Tokyo with 171 yen in our pockets, empty Suica cards in our wallets, and many great memories. It’s good to be home, but I wish I’d had more time to explore!