Quist World Tour

The last few days, we have felt certain things slipping beyond our control. For instance, our tempers. We were getting to the point of any trip, somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 through, where at least one of us is wondering at all times if we will make it to the end without hating each other.   Allison spent three days incapacitated by a stomach bug, which was particularly unpleasant yesterday as we had to take a cross-country train to get to our next destination. She made it, and the nausea is subsiding slowly. She actually did some sightseeing today and even ate half of her dinner. Now we are in the home stretch—3 hotel nights to go. Andrew is ready to see his girlfriend again (and not see us for at least a short period of time). Allison is ready to see our dog, to sleep on her own pillow, and to “see people who are not my family.” This might be exacerbated by the fact that Andrew ran out of deodorant, and Natalie had told us to avoid Japanese deodorant, so the only kind he co...

This morning, just before 5 am, a 5.0 earthquake somewhere northeast of us made a Tokyo’s ground tremble. I happened to wake up to the bed shaking a bit; this is the fourth time I’ve felt one in my life. Three of those four times I’ve wondered what Brian could possibly be doing in his sleep—a constant leg twitch? a terrifying nightmare?— to cause our bed to shimmy this way. One of those times was three days ago in the middle of the night in the same hotel room, but it didn’t occur to me then what it was. This morning I heard the wall shift slightly as it was happening and it became clear. Japan has small earthquakes almost every day, so this should be no surprise, but of course my nighttime self is not the most reasonable version of me, so I lay in bed another half hour wondering what might come next. I am the family seismograph—everyone else slept through both tremors this week.  This echoes my function in our family in real life. When one of our children is going thr...

We (except Natalie who hasn’t been with us much) don’t know any Japanese. Well, we know how to say five things to be exact. Hello. Goodbye. Thank you very much. Yes. Excuse me.  We read with the help of the Google translate app—you hold up your phone over the menu or sign or toilet directions, and English appears on your phone. It is always at least slightly off—what are meat trousers? Are they really serving fried chicken cartilage? So much of the Japanese foodie scene is wasted on me anyway, born with a strong gag reflex to anything that has lived in the sea (ask my mom). I so want to be a person who can eat anything, but I am not. And the food here is often not made for someone like me. This is a shame because there is excellent food at every turn. Even the 7-11 sells great food. Also not made for me (or the rest of my fam): observation deck windows and binoculars. We have to bend over pretty far sometimes to try to see something. Chairs and benches leave our knees at c...

Every time you get on a bus, or a train, or for that matter walk into a convenience store in Japan, you will hear a little song created especially for that place or vehicle. The washing machine in our little apartment plays a digital segment (think Wii Music) piece of classical music that I cannot place, though I know it was on one of our Baby Einstein vídeos back in the day. The doorbell (yes our hotel room has a doorbell) plays another electronic chime. The Maibara station plays something suspiciously like the chorus of "Do They Know It’s Christmas?" by BandAid, and "Mary Had a Little Lamb" came over the loudspeaker at Kyoto station once. It’s like everything electronic needs to greet you and say goodbye.  I still haven’t gotten over the toilets here. In public restrooms, seats are heated and bidet options are on offer. Here in our little apartment, the porcelain throne greets me by lighting up and starting some kind of running water noise to mask any indisc...

After a couple of nights at the traditional ryokan, where we all slept on futon mattresses on the floor, I can tell you a few things. One of my children grinds her teeth every time she shifts positions. Another cannot abide by going to bed on the early side (this actually afflicts most of us, but the time difference has certainly thrown me off my late-night game). And I can say with absolute certainty that this sleeping arrangement was not created with jet-lagged, middle-aged ladies who need a hip replacement in mind. So while I was sad to leave the island of Miyajima behind, it was a pleasure to move into a more modern pair of adjoining rooms with actual beds in Kyoto. These rooms are actually tiny apartments, and I marvel at the efficiency we see. In the space of a large American living room we have a bed, a set of bunk beds, a kitchenette, 2 love seats, a coffee table, a shower and bath, a toilet room, sink and a washer. The Japanese take their bathrooms seriously, with soaking...

We left our house at 6:15 am on Tuesday and 27 hours later four out of five Quists stumbled into hotel rooms in Nagoya, Japan. We only stayed the night, but I haven’t slept that hard in years, at least without anesthesia. The next morning we rolled out of bed and caught a train to one town where we caught a taxi to Hikone, where Natalie awaited us with equal amounts of eagerness to see us and irritation at having to get up early. She’s been studying in Hikone since September through the Japan Center for Michigan Universities, an arm of Michigan State. It was so good to see her! And immediately we invaded her life, dropping our piles of luggage in her room, dragging her off to see Hikone Castle, and embarrassing her with our American tourist ways. She gets over it whenever we buy her food though, so it’s okay. She helped us order food and buy train tickets. It is an amazing thing to see your own child speaking proficiently in a language you can’t even begin to comprehend, like she is ...