sean vs japan vs the snow

Okay it’s story time once again, but first how about a little sidetracking about the past week or so. First off we had our first big snowstorm a few days ago, we had at least a foot of snow. I was at fedex the morning the storm hit and I decided to take the back way home, mostly to avoid being on the interstate, if I am going to get in an accident, rather do it at slow speeds. So ride home to a bit longer than usual, which I was ok with. My real fun started as I tried to turn onto my street, they hadn’t plowed at all and I knew that if I tried to go down that street, I would have gotten stuck, so I drive around the area and try to find a road that is plowed that I can park on and walk home. At first no luck, but I decided to follow a plow, hoping he would lead me to a good place. But he pulled over and told me to go around, he was having issues with the plow, so about a block or two later I get stuck. After about 20 minutes of trying to get unstuck myself, I call my VW roadside assistance and find out that my free help was done when the lease was up and it would cost 80 for a tow, so after being on the phone for 10 minutes getting details about my car, find out my card was declined, WTF. So I call M&I and see what is going on, my balance is well over the 80.00 needed, so why wasn’t it working. Come to find out they stopped my debit card due to some fraudulent charges, one for .44. So I had them close that card and have them issue me another one. So I have been without a debit card since then, and I had to write checks, so 1990’s. So anyways, back to my stuck car, I end up helping a guy about a block down from my car get his van unstuck, we also had a guy with a truck and tow wire help get both of us out of the snow. So after an hour of getting cars and vans out of the snow, I finally get moving again and head back to my house, still no plowing going on our street, so I find a main road about 2 blocks away and park my car there. Figure if I go home and sleep a few hours, our street should be finally plowed. I wake up and I timed it perfectly, plow was just coming through at 1pm! I move my car and then get a few more hours of sleep before I have to work at IPIC. So after a long day like that, I am thinking that Lamela’s offer to move to Vegas, was starting to look like a really good idea. So I guess the moral of this story is that I need to move to someplace warmer and not buy a lot of stuff online, lesson learned. I did go see “yes man” that night, which was good, no where close to Liar Lair, but it made me laugh, which is what I needed on that day. I have a tradition of going to see Jim Carey movies on opening night, I think I have only missed one, and I remember me and some friends driving through a blizzard from whitewater to Janesville to see one of his movies. I have been putting in a lot of hours at fedex this past week, due to the plane delays and I figure I could always use the extra money, specially this time of year. I am going to be glad when this season is over with.

So anyways enough of the sidetracking, time to get back on track, and I will not return you to our story in progress….
So last time I wrote about my trip, I was in Kyoto and I was staying at a hostel. Well I woke up early the next day for a few reasons, one I wanted to check out the buffet they had at the hostel, and I wanted to try and make it up to the two main temples up on the hillside. I made my return trip back to Tokyo a little early, cause I need to get back in time to make it to the Ghibli Museum at my timeframe on my ticket. So I eat a very filling breakfast and then head out. I have about an hour and half to make it up there and make it back to the train station in time to make my train. As I start heading towards the temples I get a little sidetracked by a few smaller temples on my way. Well after awhile I am trying to figure out how much farther I have to go yet, I don’t seem to be getting any closer to where I wanna go. So I see that I gotta head back soon, so I don’t miss my train. Getting to the station was easy, all I had to do was find the Kyoto tower and head for that, it was right across the street from the station. On my way back I walked by a few schools, with these huge areas for all the students to put their bikes, and the weird thing, no of them had locks on them, wow, that could never happen in the US, most of those bikes would be gone here. Also I ran into the couple from Canada that I met on the train to my hotel the day I landed in Tokyo. I was joking when I told them that maybe I will see them in Kyoto, and I found them. They were having fun and we gave each other short versions of what we had been up to so far, I would have loved to talk or hang out more with them, but I had a train to catch. I make it to the station with about 15 minutes to spare. So I grabbed a soda out of one of the vending machines and just watched all the people running around the station. I get on the train and we head back to Tokyo, I once again had an aisle seat, but I was able to move over to the window for about half the trip, got to see Mt. Figi, not as cloudy on the way back. I think If and when I decide to go back to japan, I would go back to Kyoto and spend some more time sightseeing around there, I really wished I would have found the Nintendo building.
So I finally get back to my hotel, took a shower and took a short nap and then I was on the train once again, heading towards kichijoji to go to the Ghibli museum. I get to the museum and as I walk in, I find out no pics are allowed, denied. So I guess I have to describe all of the awesomeness I saw inside the museum. They have a small area with the little diaramas with scenes from some of the movies, and they also had this really cool thing that had little models of characters and then, the lights would go out and a strobe light came on, and it looked like the models/creatures were moving. Like I said, very cool in person. As I walked around the rest of the museum checking out the room that we set up like his office, with sketches and reference photos, all over the place. This museum had little things in there for the kids too, they had a giant cat bus that the kids could play on, had small entrances to some of the corridors just for kids, and a spiriling staircase, which pretty much only kids could use. There was also a theatre where you could watch a short that was created just for the museum, but it was small so I didn’t feel like waiting for it. There is a bigger spriling staircase that goes up the roof where there is a giant robot statue that overlooks the museum. Checked out some more of the museum and looked through the gift shop, nothing really cool that I wanted so I just picked up a souvenier book on my way out. So after that I headed back towards the train station and tried to see if I could find the cat café, and I came up empty once again, maybe I wasn’t supposed to find it. I walked around some of the shops for a bit, just kind of looking for some stuff to maybe bring back with me, but once again, nothing jumped out at me. Well after a long day I headed back to my hotel and spent a few hours on my computer getting caught up on some things and looked up more info on the cat café. I had one more free day in Japan before I headed back on Sunday. I found some reference pics and drew some little maps, I was going to find this place.

Well there you go, I have only more day to write about, well actually two, if you count the day I leave and head back home, but maybe I will combine the two of them into one.

I hope you all are doing good, staying warm and out of the snow, and I hope you have a good holiday, I am heading home after work on xmas eve and then heading back sometime on xmas at night, cause I gotta work the following morning at fedex. I will be glad to be home for a day, going to have my dad cut my hair, oh yeah, my dad is back home and seems to be doing better. He went back to work, so it looks like things are back to normal again.

Have a week

Sean