2009: First Hours

September 30, 2009
DATELINE KYOTO:  First 24 hours

Departed 190 Harben @ 10:30 am EDT 9/28.
Hours spent 9/27 online, on phone to check in.  No go.
NW/DL merger.  Smerger.  Delta.  Smelta.
Counter check-in smooth as silk satin.
ATL – Narita best route yet but usual 14 hours.
Unexplained delay in flight to Kansai.
Arrived 50 Nishi Sakuragi-cho 12:30 am 9/30 — in the rain.
25+ hours door-to-door.
Quick trip to local 7/11 for cup noodles (seafood flavor?) and mini beer.
Mid-night snack plus morning victuals.

Morning walk along Takano-gawa to buy Int’l Herald Trib.
Still raining, water thundering over the barrages (seiki).
Check it out: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/barrage
Cosmos in white, pink lavender plus coreopsis in oranges and yellow.
September lilies the color of papaya flesh.
Kudzu (kuzu) aplenty.  Usual herons and egrets at breakfast.
Home with milk tea and Trib.  Typhoon in Viet Nam front-page news.

Off to late lunch with Kawashima-san at our favorite spot.
$6 left in bank for utilities.  Fed in $90 more.  Exchange rate a killer now.
Cross street to next bank to pay rent due. 
Complex process I will never manage solo.
Ice coffee at the Campus Coffee House — some blocks from Doshisha U.
Never have seen a student there.
A few essentials from the  ¥100 shop.
Home in the rain.
Two weeks to pack.  Two days to unpack?

Real shopping for real Japanese food at my local Coop Supa (I own one  ¥500 share).
Fresh flowers, of course, and all I’ll need for the next few days (a guest tomorrow night).  Veggies, fruit, fish, yoghurt, soba, tofu:  result a longed-for feast tonight.  Dishes, always dishes – in Japanese cuisine it is endless.  Life: one washing of dishes follows another.  No sink stack-up here.

The night’s NHK news all about the earthquake and tsunami in Samoa and warning of same here on the Pacific coast.  Just a few centimeters.  Followed by the war chests garnered by Japanese politicians.  So what’s new?

More Trib and bed.

Bliss in the quiet Kyoto rain.