Tokyo

We made it safely to Tokyo on Thursday morning. We had a great flight and arrived here after 14 flying hours. We flew west over Alaska, viewing Anchorage and Juneau out the side window, it was just beautiful. For our 15th anniversary, Mark and I had always said we would like to cruise to Alaska, we were too busy with our 2 year old triplets to make that happen and have never reconsidered that trip. We've been over Alaska now! The snow covered peaks, glaciers and icebergs were impressive, what a sight to see. It was really stunning, it looked so rugged it made me wonder how people navigate it on the ground.

The company paid for all of us to travel 'business' class, what a blessing! The problem is we may never be able to drag our boys back to economy after tasting the "good" life!! They were impressed with the service and food, I must say I'm a little impressed myself that filet mignon can be served out of those little galley areas. Within five minutes of boarding, Ethan had his socks and houseshoes secured on his feet, blanket out and pillow placed for a potential 14 hours of movie watching, if you know Ethan you know he was one happy camper! Of course, not all movies were suitable watching, Dustin commented that he watched, 'Horton Hears a Who' over 3 times!! Needless to say they didn't utilize the business class beds too much, they were too busy eating and watching movies. Thankfully, Mark and I were able to sleep a good bit-someone has to keep their wits about themselves. Especially Mark, the last week trying to depart had been really busy for him, on Tuesday night before leaving, he didn't come to bed till 5am on Wednesday morning. He really needed some sleep. Overall, it was a great first leg of our trip except Ethan lost his retainer that he had less than 48 hours, the stewards and I were unable to find it among all the dirty dinner trays, thankfully most people appreciated the filet mignon as well and the trays were mostly empty-even of orthodontic retainers. I guess we will find out about orthodontists in Thailand pretty early on in our adventure!!

Japan is one of the most 'foreign' places I've ever been, it is surprising how few people speak English. I really appreciate the importance of all that language learning that our friend Lori and her husband are doing as missionaries in Japan. (Lori, thanks for the Tokyo tips, they were very helpful.) Also, there will be few pictures coming of our Tokyo stay, part of the frustration of having 3 boys that like technology is that they mess with your things without your knowledge. One son, who will remain nameless, wanted to download some pictures and forgot to place the memory stick back into the camera, you can imagine my chagrin when I couldn't take any pictures on our bus tour of Tokyo yesterday. "The blog, what about the blog!!" Okay, so I am going to have to be really descriptive and hopefully you can 'see' it through my eyes. Just imagine lots and lots of people, Tokyo is really crowded. So many men in white dress shirts and black slacks, and ladies in business suits all going somewhere. It's really a mass of people moving around the sidewalks. Several times we were sitting on the tour bus I tried to make it my challenge to see if I could catch the eye of any of the passerbys and if they would acknowledge me. It seemed more likely that the older Japanese person would, I received several smiles and a couple of waves. All of our dealings with the people here have left the impression that they are a hard-working, gracious, honorable people group. Right away, we were struck by the fact that our bell boys would not accept a tip for hauling all those bags up to our hotel room. Our conceirge said that tipping is not a common practice here. It's a good thing because everything else is so expensive. To swim at our $300/night hotel it is $21/person!! Needless to say we will wait to swim in Thailand.

I must say that I have eaten more unusual and unidentifiable foods in the last 48 hours here than all my previous life-no joke. Mark has been to Japan many times and has really learned to like Japanese food. Thankfully, he has been able to navigate us through some of the menus, table manners, and foods. Let's see some new things that I like. I really liked the eel that you dip in a curry/salt mixture. I liked the 'cold' seaweed appetizer, the tofu 'cold' mixture, the squid. I've enjoyed all the raw sashimi for the most part, thanks to wasabi-you know we like spice! I just couldn't make myself try the horse tongue sashimi, I kept thinking of Thunderbolt and seeing his tongue when I had to file his teeth in LA. I did close my eyes and just eat the poor little fish that was staring back at me-head to fin. It tasted really good as long as I kept pushing the picture of him out of my mind. I've learned that I like warm food, so many of the foods we've had here are served raw and cold. The boys have been great sports and have tried almost everything at least once. I really put my foot down that they couldn't ask for Dr.Pepper or silverware. Thankfully, last night, the waitress placed bibs on us before eating!! I was relieved to see that everyone in the establishment had them on, not just the American inexperienced chopstick eaters! Let me just tell you-we needed those bibs! Some of the things that I didn't care for-I didn't like the cuttlefish (?), the warm Japanese yogurt, the pickled radishes and all the disliked things from the boys dishes piled on my plate!! Nathan has been the most adventurous eater so far, Ethan is in big trouble because he has never liked fish-he even thought the dessert smelled like fish. Thankfully, he does like fried shrimp and he loves rice as long as you have a lot of soy sauce!! I've also forbidden him from saying, "Can we just get some Chinese food?" We are in Japan my child!!

We saw some amazing sites yesterday. We saw the Imperial palace, Tokyo tower, a pearl cultivator, (did you know that it takes 10 years to cultivate pearls? they can even train the oyster to form a heart shaped pearl.) and lots and lots of shopping areas. I guess with so many people you have to have lots of shops. 40% of the Japanese people smoke.

We visited a shrine and temple. One of the shrines we visited was built for an idol that was found in the river, the goddess of mercy (I think the guide was saying his name is Kannon) anyway this temple has been built and used for this idol that no one has seen for 130 years, because it is too holy for anyone to lay eyes on. As I watched the people streaming into the temple to pray to this hidden idol, I thought, "Oh, if they only knew the one, true, living God." I wish I had a picture of the people spreading the incense smoke on their bodies outside the temple for healing, or pulling one of the drawers in the temple to receive a good, bad or best fortune for themselves. Because of visiting here it causes me to feel gratefulness that I can pray to God through Jesus. I wondered watching the people praying before the altars what or whom do they think they are praying to-the wooden object, the empty altar? I have much to learn about these Eastern religions.

Isn't it interesting that a pagan nation would have such a strong, hard-working ethic? That the people would be so gracious. We have not seen any immodest dressing (none), weird piercing, few tatoos-except for the occasional American or European. Our nation has fallen so far from it's original Christian beginnings. We also haven't seen one other person besides Nathan with a Dallas Cowboy cap-imagine that?

I'll close, it's 4:15 am here, the time change is difficult, my internal clock thinks it's 3:15 in the afternoon. Hopefully, this stopover will help make the transition easier to Thailand, we shouldn't be so tired and jet-lagged. Even though the rest of the trip is 8 hours of flight time we don't pass through that many time zones and mostly head south from this point on. I've enjoyed our short visit to Japan, we should be in Bangkok late, late tonight.