— पांच हजार छह सौ छह —
It's always difficult for me to fully wrap my brain around how we keep time in a global context, and crossing the International Date Line—especially traveling west.
Today is Tuesday, April 23. Yesterday, Shobhit had a 10-hour layover in Tokyo—during which time it was Tuesday, April 23.
Officially, there is a 16-hour difference between Seattle and Tokyo. But functionally, there is an 8-hour difference: when it is 8 p.m. in Seattle, it is noon in Tokyo. Except at the same time, the date is one day forward. What? Well, it begins to make somewhat more sense if you divide the globe into 24 zones, you have to start somewhere and then hit that spot again once all the way around, at which point you'd be at opposite ends of a 24-hour period. It still takes a lot of getting used to.
Of course, we also dealt with this both times we traveled to Australia, in 2020 and in 2023. And even though Tokyo and Sydney are on opposite hemispheres between north and south, you know what the time difference is between
those two cities?
One hour.
Shobhit has already taken to telling people he'll be "time traveling" on his way home: His flight out of Tokyo left at 4:25 pm local time on Tuesday, April 23. And he is scheduled to land in San Francisco at 9:45 am local time on Tuesday, April 23. Even his connection from San Francisco to Seattle is scheduled to land at 2:38 pm—about two hours earlier than it left Tokyo on the same date.
Anyway. All that aside, after waffling slightly on the plan, he did venture out into the city for his 10-hour layover in Tokyo yesterday (today, whatever). He took a
ton of pictures—I'd say exclusively for my benefit. For the first time, a trip he took to India resulted in three different photo albums on my Flickr account:
Doha, Qatar for his layover with his sister's family on the way there; the
India visit itself; and now
Tokyo, Japan for his layover on the way back.
I kind of waffled myself regarding whether to make a standalone album for his stay in Delhi, which was over three weeks. I still need to save a screenshot I took of him the other day with his mom standing in the background, at which point that photo album will have all of . . . seven shots. I think Shobhit finds Delhi to be too normal to him, too rote, so he never sees things and regards them as worth taking photos of. (I am certain I would take endless photos there.) It's his layover photo albums that yielded the unusually large numbers of shots: 66 shots from Doha, and from Tokyo—a staggering 126 shots.
Shobhit texted me before he was able to send the photos that a lot of them looked the same. I was like, "I'll just keep the best ones." I think he sent a total of something like 135 shots, though, and I deleted less than 10 of them. I kept 62 shots of his visit to
Tokyo Skytree alone, he took so many shots from the observatory there.
I hadn't even realized this: at a height of 2,080 ft, Tokyo Skytree is the tallest observation tower in the world (it also doubles as a broadcasting tower)—it's 265 ft taller than Toronto's CN Tower (which remains the tallest structure in the Western Hemisphere), although the higher of its two observatories is only 13 feet higher than the taller of the CN Tower's observatories, so not a huge difference in height in terms of public access. Furthermore, Tokyo Skytree is the third-tallest structure overall in the world, behind only the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur.
In other words, it's really tall.
It also stands out in the Tokyo skyline, which is massive mostly only in the sense of the endless expanse of the world's largest city to basically the horizon. There's not a lot of supertall skyscrapers in Tokyo, though, only one of them taller then 1,000 ft; no others taller than 900 ft; three others taller than 800 ft; there's about 19 that stand between 700 and 800 ft though. In any event, Tokyo Skytree dwarfs every one of them—as does Tokyo Tower, which turns out to be a totally different building, also a communication and observation tower, and was Tokyo's tallest structure between 1958 and when Tokyo Skytree was finished in 2012. I didn't even realize there were two such buildings when I looked up Google Maps metro directions for Shobhit last week, which were all to Tokyo Tower. When he turned on International Roaming in Tokyo and he texted me,
Tokyo Tower or Tokyo Skytree? I was like, oh shit. I looked up new directions to Tokyo Tower.
He actually intended for a bit to go to both of them. But, Tokyo Skytree was his second major stop, and by then he felt another stop would be cutting it too close and so he decided to head back to the airport.
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— पांच हजार छह सौ छह —
When Shobhit and I discussed over Skype last week, places of interest for his 10-hour layover, he sent me
this link with the headline
16 Things To Do On A Long Layover In Tokyo. I sent him Google Maps metro directions from Haneda Airport to at least half of these places, helping him decide which ones to put on his list.
And you know what? I am realizing now why there was confusion between "Tokyo Tower" and "Tokyo Skytree." Skytree isn't even mentioned on this page, which is really strange. Why recommend only the older one? Re-reading the blurb, maybe it's because Tokyo Tower was built as a replica of the Eiffel Tower—it does indeed have nicer looking design, to be honest. But! Tokyo Skytree would still always have been at the top of
my list, because it is not only taller, but the tallest structure there. I might still have been a little less strong in my opinion about it over text when he suddenly said,
Tokyo Tower or Tokyo Skytree? had I realized then the Eiffel Tower connection. Oh well.
Shobhit wound up just going to a few of the notable spots, the first of which was
Sensoji Temple, which he ultimately sent me 39 shots of (he actually sent more; I kept 39 of them). It is in the Asakusa district, and in my album I have 49 shots from there. That's where "Shibuya Crossing," the world's busiest pedestrian crosswalk, is located. He did send me a few photos of an intersection crosswalk, but considering they were mostly empty in his photos and they were taken at just after 8am local time, I don't think it was Shibuya Crossing specifically.
— पांच हजार छह सौ छह —
I had a Happy Hour with Laney after work yesterday, and Shobhit was exploring Tokyo at exactly the same time, though nearing the end of it: it was 8:41 pm my time when he was back at the airport and through security. By then, I was next door chatting with Alexia. I'll get to that in a moment.
We
were going to go to La Cocina Oaxaqueña for Happy Hour, having invited Alexia to join us. She had told me over the weekend that she could, but then she emailed me yesterday morning that she got a better look at her schedule and getting to meet up with us on time was a "pipe dream." So, I emailed Laney and we agreed to push La Cocina Oaxaqueña down the road so she could potentially actually join us, and we opted for one of the several other new places we've discussed trying on Capitol Hill. We decided on a place on Pike between Summit and Belmont, which appeared to have a pretty appealing Happy Hour menu between 4 and 6, and I was able to ride by bike there in about 20 minutes. Luckily Laney was already there with an outdoor table claimed, as any later and they'd have all been taken.
I had two of their $10 Happy Hour "Ultimate Margaritas," and a Happy Hour order of nachos which cost seven bucks. Laney had the same food, and we were both pretty disappointed by the "cheese" they topped it with, which was more like a queso sauce, with a kind of almost-pink tinge to it. It tasted okay, to be fair, but was just not the kind of cheese topping you tend to associate with nachos. We were assured that their quesadilla has regular cheese in it, so we'll come back again to try that, although that one isn't on the Happy Hour menu.
The weather was kind of barely tolerable for outdoor seating: in sharp contrast to weather hovering around 70° last week, the high yesterday was like 58°. But at least it was sunny, so Laney had her winter coat, and I was layered with a hoodie under a light jacket, which made us both comfortable enough. The service was a bit slow but they were shockingly busy for a Monday evening. In the end we left at around 6:40 and I had just enough time to ride up to the Walgreens at Broadway and Pine and pick up some medication for Shobhit.
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Because Alexia was unable to join us for Happy Hour, she suggested I text her when I got home so we could catch up. She got back from a brief visit with her dad in San Antonio who has dementia, earlier last week. It sounded like it was very possible this was the last time she'll see him, although the way she talked about it that wasn't a full guarantee.
She also had unrelated major news to tell me though. She's moving out of her condo! At the end of May! When she first started telling me this, I totally assumed she was finally going to the house she owns in Boise, Idaho. But, nope: she found a much more spacious two-bedroom apartment in Issaquah. She just wants to live in a quieter neighborhood, she said. When she mentioned the two bedrooms though, she said, "You could spend the night!" I don't know how likely that is, but you never know.
She did say that she plans to stay in touch with all her friends, and keep coming into the city, although in realistic practice that doesn't tend to happen as much as people who move outside the city plan or hope to. I'm sure she'll still come any time we invite her to join us for dinner at Saffron Grill, for example, and will probably still participate in my Birth Week every time I invite her. She did also say that, if I can't find anyone else to look after the cats when Shobhit and I go to Toronto in June, she'll happily still do it as planned. That seems like a long way just to come and feed cats twice a day, but whatever. My guess is I'll find another person in the building to look after them; there may still be someone who did it back before Alexia started to.
It'll be a lot different not having her right next door anymore, though. And the end of May is not far from now at all.
She gave me a homemade chocolate cookie and I went back home next door.
— पांच हजार छह सौ छह —
[posted 1:23 pm]
