highway through heaven

OK, so it ended up being a 'leave at 11 PM, get there at 7 AM' trips, mostly because of the complexity of the sadistic gaijin trap that is the Tokyo expressway system, combined with sleep deprivation. we stopped by akasaka to pick up kaori about 3 AM and headed out to her place towards yokohama, but spent 3 + hours driving circles not only around and through tokyo, but slicing up up and away and above tokyo. the tokyo expressway system is an incredible magical hovering heaven-like concrete monstrous motor speedway jamboree that allows you to drive (hover, really) at high speeds within just a few feet of the craniums of sleeping tokyoites. as the sun started to rise, we had a beautiful view of tokyo tower. we absorbed the sunrise wandering lost through the world's largest metropolis, tightly packed with rows and columns of humanity-filled concrete. we saw bright lights, sea scapes and brick jungles, and sky scrapers. we were tired and delirious. i think lopaka started talking about rainbow monkeys.

we finally got a map, but it didn't help until i had an hour to process its info. the maps are useful to those people who can read kanji and what not, but to us single-alphabet lame-brain country-bumpkins, a map of any tokyo highway or train system looks exactly like a complex computer generated fractal pattern.






one of the the most entertaining and equally frustrating parts of finding your way around japan is asking the helpful locals, who should be in the know, but are either flustered by having to speak to a foreigner, or just flustered in general. each of the 6 convenience stores we stopped at gave us different directions, until they finally just told us to go to the police box where we found 2 of the most harmless looking cops standing out front, holding their flashlights and waiting for the phone to ring (probably with a report that another umbrella has been stolen from the train station). we asked them the way to shinmaruko (kaori's hood) and they giggled like my junior-high students. they conversed about it for 10 minutes and then pointed in one direction with a shrug.

when we finally got into kanagawa we stopped an old man taking out his morning trash and asked where shinmaruko was (it was just down the road at that point). the conversation between kaori and the old gentleman went something like this:

"excuse me, how do we get to shinmaruko? it's nearby here."
"shinamaruko? i think it's that way"
"really? we just came from that way"
"oh. wait, SHINmaruko? there's no such place called shinmaruko. it doesn't exist."
"yah it does, I live there!"

Anyway, the Hawaii fest was fun. pics to come.