Warm and mostly sunny.
Today was good. I didn't have to rush anywhere, I didn't have to catch any buses or trains. I did have to go to work, but that was fine.
I also slept in a bit today! I tried to get up at my regular time but failed miserably. Sigh.
Today I did a little bit of cleaning around the apartment. Not as much as I should, but enough to make me happy! I vacuumed a bit and also cleaned the coffeepot with baking soda. It actually sparkled.
I went off to school and taught my lessons today. I had to rush a bit before my first student came as I'd spent too much time cleaning the school and not enough preparing. Still, things went quite well, and I think that he "got it". My second class also went quite well. We're close to finishing our textbook. It's an exciting time for the student.
Fumihiko and I ate dinner out tonight at Bronco. It wasn't too fancy, just steak, but it was okay. We were their last customers of the night. After dinner we bought groceries. I'm going to make tacos for dinner tomorrow night, but we don't have taco shells anymore so Fumihiko will have to use lettuce leaves like me. Poor thing!
He was a dear tonight and translated an email for a student for me. I'll send it from my account tomorrow morning/afternoon/whenever I remember. I watched Monk while he was busy. It was okay. I thought some of it was rather amusing.
And that was it. My day. Not too exciting, but nice and restful. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to have even more relaxation!
Oh, a couple of things. I added more pictures to my Flickr account, so please check them out, and if anyone out there is in Facebook, would you let me know so I can friend you?
Yesterday, I promised you the story of the Azabu fiasco. Well here goes. Remember that I have pneumonia in one lung. In my case it means that I can't always catch my breath and at times have trouble getting enough air in my lungs to cough or sneeze.
Well, on Friday, my darling husband manages to navigate us all the way to Azabujan Subway Station, the closest one to our hotel. Great! He confidently sets out from the station on the way to the hotel. Now, if you don't know Japan, you don't know that subways are deep underground. Elevators are sometimes available, but more likely not. There are sometimes escalators, and sometimes the escalators will go halfway up the subway exit and then stop. And most often, there are no escalators at all. Just stairs. Remember I have pneumonia. And a suitcase.
We climb up to the street level, using a mixture of escalators and stairs. I'm a bit out of breath, but I manage. He confidently sets off down one street, down a hill, then up another road. Finally he looks around and looks puzzled. Then he looks at his map. And says, "I'm sorry. I was headed for the church, not the hotel. I used the wrong exit." (Our friend was getting married the next day in Azabu.) I was flabbergasted. And thirsty. So, I asked if we could stop at the Tully's Coffee just over there. We tried, but they were full, and wouldn't let us sit down. Sigh. We head back to the station. Down the road, up the hill and back across the street. We went back down into the station. Down, down, down. Carrying my suitcase. I'm a little slower now. There are no down escalators. We get down to the level where we chose the wrong exit. Fumihiko consults his little map and then says, "That one." We go up, up, up. I'm quite slow now and I'm not happy. There are no escalators at all on this exit. We get up to street level again. We are across the street from the Station. We were in the same place about 10 minutes earlier. I'm sweating and breathing hard. Fumihiko consults his map again. "It's this way." We set off again, along a busy road filled with lots of tourists. There's another coffee shop, but by now I just want to get to the hotel. I say I'll wait for the hotel. We come to a main road. We set off to the left. We get to another big road. I make him look at a map on the corner. He compares it to his map. Hmm. He tries to ask a lady in a shop about our hotel, but she says she hasn't heard of it. He decides to go to the right now. He gets more confident as we get further and further away from the station. It was another 10 minutes but he did finally find it. And it was okay. But, later that evening when we were out walking unemcumbered by suitcases, I discovered an elevator to the train station that was at most 2 blocks away from the hotel, on the main road. We could have walked through the station where it was cool and the ground was smooth (good for our wheelie suitcases) instead of baking in the sun and bumping into everybody...if he'd only asked someone in the station.
So, that was the lovely start to our holiday in Tokyo. Luckily things did get much better, but it was a bad start, and I was so tired that night.
Got to go, night!
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