A Slow Sort of Country, Indeed

Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'

'Of course it is,' said the Queen, 'what would you have it?'

'Well, in OUR country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else--if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.'

'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'

-Alice and the Red Queen from Alice Through the Looking Glass 

And, oh, an awful lot of running that was had...
*cue "An Awful Lot of Running To Do" by Chameleon Circuit...*

The day before today and the day before that seemed primarily to have passed in a haze of travel. While traveling is generally what one would expect and welcome whilst in another country, sometimes the travel becomes excessive and crosses that veiled line into unnecessary. The past two days were examples of those times. While traveling all the way to Otsu, then Kyoto, getting on the wrong train and having to back track and then arriving back home again in Hikone for no reason really other than to eat lunch and....see this:

(Kyoto Station)

may seem like a basket of kittens, it was not. Especially with then not being rested for the trip to Tokyo the next day. Listening to Imai-sensei talk about his life was like traveling back in time with him, though...

BUT, TOKYO!

(after the mishap of the Shinkansen tickets not working and the Unfortunate Professor having to pay out of pocket a second time...)

Our traveler and her companions started the excursion with a meeting/briefing with two Deputy Foreign Ministers from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and heard their presentations on U.S./Japanese relations and East Asian/Japanese relations. It was pretty surreal speaking with people that were responsible for reasoning with other countries, but she reasoned that addressing a queen would be a more intimidating experience...

After that, food was sought after, but as our traveler is finding it much and much more difficult to find sustenance (more on that in a later post, to be sure...), she finally split with the group and went to a seperate restaurant to order straight-forward spaghetti. Then there was more traveling! (=sardine packing on Tokyo subways...)

The first shrine she went to in Tokyo definitely spoiled her into expecting every shrine to have extensive grounds to explore and things to discover. So, Upon arriving at the Highly anticipated Yasukuni Shrine (where all of the war dead are enshrined, similar to Arlington in the U.S.) and seeing the beautiful Torii Gate:

And seeing how big it was:

It was a little disappointing that we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, and that the only two things that really caught her eye were the two children playing with rocks on the side:

And the interesting looking clock:

The museum was very moving, and had a section with pictures lining the walls and glass cases everywhere with actual letters (and translations) men had written to their family members that were recovered after they had been killed. It was enough to make anyone cry a pool of tears...

After perusing the museum, it of course began to rain (AWESOME!) and so the group of travelers huddled together under the entryway for shelter and to decide their next move:

(but that also meant our stalker-in-training was able to take a shot of the shrine:

and these unsuspecting victims:

....these kids over here riding the trains and running off to their destinations by themselves are so cute <3 )

ANYWAY, after that there was a bit of free time to break off into groups, and so more traveling ensued! This  time to Shibuya, the shopping destination, according to some:

(and Hachiko park~ which was a LOT smaller to our traveler than expected...)

The rest of the evening was spent searching for a store that didn't exist, failures to communicate, running into a lot of people, standing in the way, and loitering around with indecision (things that are generally unpleasant and tiring) so that by the time they got on the right Shinkansen and were headed home, they looked like this:

.....And got home around 11pm after leaving around 6am that morning~~~

This is not to say that She didn't like Tokyo, or that it was a bad day. It was a very good day, and she's still very much dazzled by Japan. There was just an abundance of frustrating moments... The big city with all its hustle and bustle is not the most desirable place from her perspective (although, this did give her an even firmer love of Kyoto) when she is so much quicker to love the quiet peace of the countryside, or a very large shrine <3