Getting here

Some boring details: Last Saturday morning, March 15, my friend Steve Bird picked me up at my apartment and drove me a mile through downtown Sacramento to the Amtrak station - thanks Steve! From there I caught the 9:10 Amtrak to Richmond, transferred to BART, made one more transfer and rode BART right to the International Terminal at SFO. I had about 90 lbs of baggage with me (heavy gifts of wine, olive oil, chocolate and books ) but I also had luggage on wheels (thanks for the loan Liz and Tom).

For those Sacramento/Davis folks who have wondered about getting to SFO by rail - it was pretty easy. It takes about 2.5 hours from Sacramento, costs $52 roundtrip and BART delivers you right to the airport terminal.

My flight left at 1:45 PM and was 10.5 hours direct to Narita airport in Tokyo. I had not been on a big international flight in 20 years so it was nice to discover that these days there are video screens for each seat, a couple dozen free movies and a remote control so that you can play them at your leisure. I was too excited to sleep so I watched American Gangster and Juno, drank about five liters of water, got up to pee and stretch my legs about seven times and did a little reading.

The plane landed in Tokyo at 5PM Sunday. Customs was a breeze with no line to wait in and no search. After picking up my luggage I bought a bus ticket for a 1.5 hour ride to the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. Navigating through the airport and buying the bus ticket were easy because in Japan most of the signs are also in English and the information booths are staffed by English speakers. Fumiko met me at Shinjuko Station and from there we took a 30 minute train ride to Sengawa, a suburb of Tokyo where she has her apartment. By the time I finally did get some sleep I had been awake for 26 hours - a new personal best, if you can call it that.