Last day in Tokyo

So, I've been out here in Japan for a week and a half or so. Tokyo was pretty crazy. Looking out the 27th floor hotel room window, all I could see in every direction was skyscrapers. Tokyo really is huge. And I could only see a small part of it. My last night there, I met up with Brett Gilbert, who was in my ward back in Provo before he moved away. We went to the train station to take a train towards his dad's house in Meguro, and boarded a train. The monitors throughout the station and the train itself showed three of the Tokyo lines being shut down because of "accidents". Trains generally don't have too many accidents. Jumping in front of trains is a pretty common way for people to committ suicide here. It happens just about every day. The government will usually send a bill to the family of the deceased as a deterrent. Seems kind of crazy to hold others liable for another's mistakes. It adds a lot of pressure to families that are already going through quite a bit.

Due to the lines being shut down, our train was packed. The train stopped after going for a few minutes (long enough to take us so far away from our starting point that walking was not an option). A message came over the P.A. system saying that the signals were malfunctioning, and that our train would have to stop. We waited for about 15 minutes, after which the conductor announced that the train would be suspended indefinitely. Some people continued to wait, but we and many others jumped out and walked to another terminal. For about 20 minutes, we and thousands upon thousands of other people, all walking shoulder to shoulder (not my shoulders, of course), shuffled through the tunnels out into the rain and to the other station. We bought another ticket and got on the subway. We finally got off and walked to Brett's dad's house.

In the middle of a dimly lit Japanese suburb of Tokyo (still not very suburban), there stands a normal looking Japanese home (though larger than most) with almost no distinguishing features. Once you step inside, you notice a difference. You take your shoes off, just like in any other Japanese home, but then you step on--wait for it--American carpet. It's the only house in the area with carpet. It's something I may not see in Japan ever again. Also, the house has central air conditioning. Also the only house in the area.

It was pretty nice. Not a spectacular mansion in the U.S., but a very nice place for Tokyo. Brett told his dad, Kent, (who was watching a Japanese teeny-bopper drama) that we wanted to drive past the Tokyo temple and through a few popular areas of Toyko, but Kent refused to let him take the car. Perhaps he was afraid that Brett wouldn't get it back without dents and scratches. The streets are barely wider than the cars here.

Kent is a celebrity in Japan. After serving his mission here, he came back and appeared on Japanese TV. Since then, he's been on all sorts of shows and even done voice work. Everybody is surpised when I mention that I know him. While I've only seen him once, I have seen an eery Kent Gilbert mannequin in the basement of his Orem home.

Kent volunteered (he left us no choice) to drive us around to the places we wanted to see. It was kind of strange to be with someone that everyone would recognize, without everybody knowing he was there. We drove past the temple, which was small, but pretty. We drove through Roppongi, one of the infamous parts of town, and through the big Times Sqare area of Tokyo that you see in all the movies. Tokyo really is an amazing place. I wouldn't want to live there, but it's amazing how they can have two four-lane highways on top of eachother, the bottom one on top of a train, with a subway running under the train, and a four-lane expressway under the subway. At Shinjuku, you may be impressed by the amount of shops and people, but then you realize that there are two floors of shops underground. They have to go either down or up, because forward, backward, left, and right are taken.

I got back to the hotel at about midnight, which was a stretch for me with all the jet lag. I had to get up at 5 the next morning to leave for the airport. I was worried that my bags were too heavy. They didn't even mention the weight of my bags at the airport counter, so I was relieved. I'm here in Uoshima now. Next entry, I'll write about my first week here.