Beijing-Tokyo-Home

The Beijing airport feels like the inside of a giant spaceship, at night. The ceiling is domed in a pleasing, organic curve kind of way but a drop-down mesh grill covers the whole thing which flattens the look out a bit. Little white lights set in the ceiling and shining through the grill give everything a diffused glow and when looked at (in a travel and fever induced haze) seem rather like a night sky, little twinkly stars. By the time morning came and dawn painted the floor-to-ceiling windows with light the ceilings set in the light winked out and natural light flooded in through skylights.

Moving from my faux-marble (but as cold as the real thing) perch in the middle of the night to a real cushy bench had been another nighttime interruption, so sleep-deprived and ill I set my brain in zombie mode and happily herded myself through security and onto my plane with my heavy bags and my funny sleep-tufted hair.

In Tokyo a Caribbean man came up to me and asked if I was a fan of the Rays. I was a little confused, even though I'd had some pretty good napping and wasn't feeling sick anymore. He gestured to my haircut and repeated, asking if I was a fan of the Rays. "Oh, no, I just like... the, uh, hair." I explained rather lamely, and then he launched into a lovely tangent about how on the island where he was from they would go spearfishing and have huge parties with drinking and eating, and how that is even better than baseball (and baseball is pretty good.) He mistook Brennan's "Hurley" t-shirt for a "Harley" t-shirt, and Brennan tried to explain that it was comfortable. "I just like soft things." The Caribbean man asked slyly, "Is she a soft thing?" Gesturing to me. Brennan quickly explained, "She could actually beat me up." And we were on our way.

With his leftover yen Brennan bought me a weird Japanese drink from a vending machine, it was a pale milky white and had bits of aloe floating in it. It felt good to be going home, actually.

Because of the strangeness of timezones we left Japan on Wednesday, the 1st of July at 5:10 in the evening and landed in California on Wednesday, the 1st of July, at 11:00 in the morning. I wandered off of the plane, jet-lagged and wobbly-headed. I was impressed by the amount of things I could read and overhear and understand but I kept using my traveler's eyes and scrutinizing things extra sharply. What an odd impression one gains just by paying attention to advertising, for example, and trying to make up scenarios for the little groups of people standing around and talking and interacting.

All in all it was very good to be back home.

I don't know where I'm going next.