Happy, ordinary Japanniversary

This weekend marks the end of our second year in Tokyo.

Yesterday, I took the train to a rock climbing gym just outside the city. On the way, I snaked through a crowded convenience store in Shinjuku Station and grabbed a gold Royal Jelly Weider energy gel pack. Since there were more than two people in line, the uniformed clerks hustled to open one more cash register, and then another. I was second in line when a woman walked straight up to the newly opened counter. The clerk apologized but asked her to wait, saying he'd start with the next customer in line, as he waved me over.

I hustled down to the tracks, where I settled onto the velvety, heated bench seat on the train. The conductor announced, as we departed three minutes behind schedule, that someone had pushed the SOS button inside the train and they had had to do a check before we could leave - sincere apologies for the delay. I glared at the pinstripe shoulder of the young man who'd sat down almost on top of me and pointedly extricated my arm from behind his. He didn't react.

I saw Betty in line on the platform a few stations later, as planned, and waved. The train was so crowded by then that we just met up when we got off. I tapped my purse against the turnstile and headed out of the station past a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, a tonkatsu place, and a family restaurant with wax food at the front door. We passed only three people in the corridor: a woman in a white fur cape with her hair in high pigtails with black lace ribbons, a guy with feathered orangey hair and one fierce three-inch silver earring, and then a woman with rainbow leggings, a denim microskirt, and electric blue eyeshadow up to her painted-on brows.

At the rock gym, I put my shoes on a shelf at the front door and walked in my socks to the reception desk. I put my 2100 yen and orange laminated member's card in the tray next to the cash register for the woman in the paper mask. I chose from an array of sports drinks in the vending machine. Betty and I sat on the floor next to one of the open-flame kerosene heaters to stretch and held our shoes up to its grill sides.  Between climbs, we thawed out our hands over it. We were careful not to knock into it while belaying.

Afterwards, heading back to the train station in drizzly snow, we thought some ramen would be nice. We were sure we could find some near the station, and, after passing a McDonald's, a Mister Donuts, a curry shop, and a florist, there it was, with a man in the front window drawing sheets of noodle dough through a press.  We paid at the machine inside the front door, choosing by the photos on the lit panels. At the counter seats, there were 5-step instructions for how to enjoy the noodles, which were tsukemen - the cooked noodles are served in a separate bowl from the soup and dipped into it.

I met Jim a few stations away. He had just finished a 10-mile run along a paved riverside path. I walked a few blocks through a covered pedestrian arcade and found him buying skewers of chicken from a cart on a street corner, two for 120 yen. He went for the chunks of thigh meat, avoiding the rows of chicken hearts browning over the coals.

We walked to a local public bath, down a road only wide enough for one car to pass at a time with concrete garden walls lining both sides. At the sento, less than five dollars gets a mini shampoo and rented bath towel (bright yellow, with Terme, the name of the place, scrawled big in black magic marker) as well as entrance to the half dozen baths, including one infused with Chinese herbs and an outdoor bath lined with smooth river rocks. I folded my face towel and put it on top of my head and sank down into the foamy jacuzzi, nodding at the old women who stared. I felt the aches and chills from climbing dissolve.

On the way back to the train, Jim and I ducked into a conveyor belt sushi place and had a few plates.

A wholly Japanese - and completely ordinary -  Saturday.