So we just finished our eel lunch in Tokyo and it’s high time to get to the airport for our flight back to Chicago.
The endless flight to Chicago passed uneventfully… we landed, and Matt had to hurry off to make his tight Boston connection. Robert and I had like six hours to kill, and since we landed outside of security (why??) so rather than immediately going back thru security we decided to grab a cab to Gibson’s to book-end the trip with that restaurant
We were pretty tired, too tired to take any pictures! The only pic we remembered to take was of dessert, naturally the creme brulet again
At ORD I convinced Robert that we should just quickly grab a cab–there was a whole line of them there, just waiting for us. But on the return trip we Uber-ed it. Stuck in traffic, I noticed an extremely bizarre BMW sort of thingie, not even sure what it was! Of course I called out how stupid that vehicle looked, and the Uber driver said “oh yeah, I have one of those.” Turns out he bought it from his son-in-law who works at a dealership, so it was kind of an awkward moment but the driver was very humorous about it and so we laughed it off… future note: don’t deride any vehicles in public haha
When we went back through Chicago security, we learned that Matt’s flight had suffered delays, cancellations, rebookings… so we hiked completely across the airport to try to find him. We went all the way over to H and looked everywhere for him but we never did connect…
Many weeks later, as I write this, the big trip is obviously long over, everyone got home and now we have only our memories. However I have a nice handful of mementos that I enjoy… random business cards, chopstick sleeves haha, train tickets to use as bookmarks
When will we return to Japan? Will the three of us ever be able to pull off connecting like this again, with busy jobs and busy lives?
Maybe it wouldn’t be too early to start planting that idea… 2027 has a nice ring to it 😀
I always think about Bilbo Baggins counseling Frodo about the dangers of walking out your front door: you never know where the paths might lead you. In my case, from Cincinnati to Chicago to Tokyo to Sapporo, bullet trains, live squid, hairy crab, nose-printed cow, top-floor whisky flights, earthquakes, slithery eels, battleships, breakfast uni, sumo, sake, shabu-shabu, train beers, whale sashimi, horse sashimi, toilets magically rising to attention, wow this trip has really been something, one for the books. Thank you so much Robert & Matthew!!
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