Month: April 2026

Ooooh, Eeeeh?

On By rrainefioreIn JapanLeave a comment

I noticed when a bunch of Japanese are sharing stories and a good part comes, they all react in unison.  It goes from one person talking to the entire group reacting with “oooooh”, the volume rising and the sound behind drawn out.  I imagined them all saying “wow” in unison, but long like “woooow”.  Then sometimes the reaction is “eeeeh?” with the sound of “are you kidding”? or “eeeeeh” with disapproval.  I almost laugh out loud each time this happens.  They become so animated and excited.  And how wonderful it might be to be the story teller and know everyone is so engaged in what you are saying.

I asked some of my Japanese friends about this and they didn’t know they reacted in unison.  “Oooooh” does mean like “wow” or “amazing”.  “Eeeeh” is used to mean different things and the tone changes based on the conversation.  It can be “What”?, “No way” or any other number of things.  It is used to convey surprise, shock, or disbelief.

Here’s a couple funny videos of some different ways to use Eeeeeh.

Earthworks Guesthouse

On By rrainefioreIn Japan, UncategorizedLeave a comment

In 2019, Peggy and I came to Japan for a workshop.  We stayed in a guesthouse in the town of Bessho Onsen near where the workshop would be held.  We loved the little hot springs town and our host was the best.

This year, we returned with Wendy and Sally.  They all stayed at the same place for a night before I got there and I joined them for the last night.  Our host was just as wonderful.  Rumi picked me up at the train station and took me to the guesthouse.  She had lunch reserved for us at a nearby restaurant.  The breaded pork cutlet was perfect.  We wandered around town.  The town was very quiet. After massages at the guesthouse we headed out for dinner which Rumi had also reserved for us.  And a last stop at the outdoor foot bath before settling in for the night.

Rumi is a pottery artist and the guest house is behind her art gallery.  Her husband does decorative iron work.  The guest house, rental cabin and beautiful garden in the middle are so artfully and thoughtfully decorated.  The gallery is full of special hand made things from her and other local artists.

Breakfast the next morning (reserved by our host) was at a small restaurant we had been to before where no one spoke English, but they were so happy to serve us.  Actually no one spoke English in the other restaurants either.  After breakfast, Rumi gathered with us in the guesthouse kitchen to make matcha tea for us.  She said it wasn’t an official tea ceremony, but taught us about the different elements of a tea ceremony and how to receive the tea and the sweets that were served along with the tea. 

After wandering around town some more, we were loaded into two taxis and taken to the retreat center.

Train Cleaning

On By rrainefioreIn Uncategorized, JapanLeave a comment

My train arrived, people got off and then it was announced that we had to wait while the train was cleaned.  Through the window, I saw the seats spin around slowly.  It looked like they were doing ballet, pirouetting around.  I saw no people.  I wondered if Japan had self cleaning trains.  Or were there tiny roombas zipping around the train that I could not see?  It was complete quickly and we were allowed to board the train. 

The second time I had to wait for a train to be cleaned, I did see a human walk through the train.  But, the seats did appear to dance and spin again on their own without help from the human.

So I did some googling and found these fun facts about Shinkansen cleaning:

It takes 7 minutes to clean the train – 1.5 minutes for trash collection, 30 seconds for seat rotation, 4 minutes for sweeping and wiping tables/windows, and 1 minute for a final check.

A single staff member is responsible for one carriage (up to 100 seats).

They use specialized equipment, such as a retractable broom and thermosensors to check for spills.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos or videos of the train being cleaned, but here is a train video and picture that I took for fun.

I’m Failing Sleep

On By rrainefioreIn Japan, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I didn’t sleep well for my first few nights in Japan.  Sometimes I have no problem when I travel, sometimes I am restless or wake up at weird times.  My watch records my sleep and when I get up I can see how I did.  The night on the plane I got a sleep score of 41.  Last night it was a 58, not much better.  I don’t really know how it calculates the score, but I’m obviously failing Sleep.  Then I look at my energy score and it’s in the low 80’s.  Huh?  Watch Math makes no sense.  I’m failing Watch Math too.

Failing Sleep was not great preparation for all the stairs.  My hotel was near a smaller train station with no escalators.  And if there were elevators, I missed them.  I saw the entrance to the station (all stairs) and went down to find my train on platform 2.  All I saw was platform 1 and no way around the tracks to the other side.  I walked around and it seemed the only solution was going to be going back up to ground level and finding another entrance.  Or I could get on the train going the wrong way for one stop and hope switching tracks would be easier at the next station.  I decided to go with Plan B, the possible no stair option.  The train pulled up to Platform 1.  I laughed out loud as the doors opened to a wall of people.  There was no way I was shoving myself, my big backpack and suitcase into that mess just to avoid stairs.  So I hobbled up a lot of stairs back to ground level.  As I looked around, I could see there were 4 entrances to the station, one on each corner of the street intersection.  I only knew the one I came up was wrong – I had a 2/3 chance of picking the right one.  If I was wrong, it would be another down and up of stairs.  Carrying my suitcase down was just as hard as up.  I crossed the street and went down again.  Success!  Platform 2!  The train was practically empty which was great too.

Even though my next station was bigger, there were still so many stairs.  I was getting more of an upper body workout than I expected.  I got near my next train early and sat at a coffee shop to cool down and enjoy an iced coffee.

This train was a shinkansen and wasn’t very crowded so I could relax before any more stairs might appear.

My last train was a small local train.  I heard it coming before it arrived.  I love the way the rails start to sing long before a train arrives.  A high pitched ringing, ping ping., the sound moving in tight waves along the rails toward you.  Then as it got closer, a cute, happy song played in the station to mark the arrival of the train.  It sounds like we might be in grade school, being invited to the playground.  The train is brightly colored and even has grade school drawings hanging up inside. 

The sounds don’t stop there.  The train sings the whole way to the town of Bessho Onsen.    As the train changes speed, the pitch of its song changes too.  There are many rural stops along the way with old wooden platforms and small stations.  It helps paint the picture that you are in the countryside.  As the train slows or sits at a station it sighs, moans and makes cooing sounds.  I’ve never heard anything like it.  After I looked it up, I learned it was from the air suspension system that balances the load of the train and its passengers.  It sounded like the train was talking to me.

I arrived in Bessho Onsen around lunch time, already exhausted, but happy to meet up with my friends.

Alley ATP

On By rrainefioreIn JapanLeave a comment

I didn’t sleep well last night.  I was awake at 2:00am, 4:00am and gave up at 5:00am.  It’s making me question how good the expensive jet lag protocol I bought is working.  Hopefully that will set me up for some good sleep tonight.  I had emptied my suitcases last night in hopes to do a more logical packing job in the morning and getting some of the things out of my backpack that are making it so heavy.  Now I had lots of time for that. 

I found out Wendy is feeling sick and the girls asked me to find cold medicine.  I asked Google if 7-11s in Japan carried cold medicine and it said they did.  Great – there is a 7-11 two blocks from my hotel.  And I have time for that!  I found some vitamin C, but no cold medicine.  I asked the clerk and he told me, no.  He gave me the location of the nearest pharmacy.  It wasn’t open and wouldn’t be before I had to be on my way to meet the girls in Bessho Onsen. 

I re-packed and decided to check out of the hotel and make my way to the Shinkansen station.  I could find a coffee shop there and enjoy a latte while I waited.  I left the hotel around 7:15 and got a text.

I was supposed to have a session with an ATP client at 7:00am, but I forgot.  My client texted me to tell me he was on the call.  Oh no, I felt so bad.  I could have done it from my room if I hadn’t just checked out.  I jumped on the call from my phone and apologized.  I was on a busy street with a ton of loud traffic.  So, I ducked into the first alley I came to.  There was a small ledge running along one of the buildings about 1 foot tall off the ground. The ledge was clean and not quite wide enough to sit on.  I squatted down and squished my butt on the ledge and propped my phone up on my suitcase in front of me.

The alley was clean and quiet.  Everything in Japan is clean.  I can’t imagine squatting in an alley for a meeting in any other country.  A few people walked by, but the didn’t act like anything was amiss.  Just a foreigner doing a video call in the alley.

ATP is Awakening To Presence.  It is coaching how to live in presence.  Living in presence helps to let go of the stress and false stories most of us live from.

Ham Plate

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I found the train office in Tokyo and tried to get my future tickets printed.  For two of the tickets they told me they couldn’t print them and I could get them in Kyoto.  I wrote “get in Kyoto” across the receipt so I wouldn’t forget later when I got to Kyoto.  For the other one, the guy kept telling me I needed the QR code, but I never received the QR code and didn’t know how I was going to pull off getting one. I stepped out of line to see if I could figure it out on my phone. 

I did!  I found the QR code on the website I had ordered from.  I got back in line to get my tickets.  Then I was told I use the QR code to get on the train.  That was lost in translation before.  My trip from Akihabara Station to Tokyo Station, therefore, was completely not necessary, but I did feel slightly more prepared for those upcoming days.

Next order of business was to find dinner.  I walked out of the train station and then did a search for restaurants.  There was a brew pub near by.  At this point I had been up for 21 hours and was out of bandwidth to walk far, make decisions or eat strange things.  A brew pub sounded good.  Maybe I could get something easy and head back to my hotel.

I turned left and walked around the corner.  Oh, I went the wrong way.  I turned around and went the other way.  Very quickly I was going the wrong way again.  How did I miss it?  How was I so turned around?  Then I looked up – there was a set of stairs and some lights on the second floor.  The brew pub was on the second floor right above where I had come out of the station.  It was a tiny place with maybe room for 15 people.  The menu was very small, mostly snack items that were cold.  I was done and decided this wasn’t real Japanese food, but it was going to be just perfect because I was there and not extremely hungry.  I ordered the ham plate.  It had four types of ham and I washed it down with a ginger ale.  The formula for this is 21 Awake Hours + 12 hour flight + 3 Train Rides + 17 Train Tickets = Ham Plate.

Winning The Airport

On By rrainefioreIn JapanLeave a comment

It’s Sunday April twenty sixth, and I am sitting at the airport waiting for my flight to take off.  I’m headed to Japan again.  The last couple times I was in Japan, I wrote in the blog, and I think I will again. I have three friends that left a few days ago and are already there.  It will be fun to meet up with them and travel with them.

I bought new travel clothes before this trip.  I’ve never had “travel clothes” before.  Usually I just wear jeans, a t-shirt and a hoodie. I think a well fitting pair of jeans are comfortable, a t-shirt is comfortable if it’s too warm and the hoodie is essential if it’s cool. But I bought a matching pair of pants, tank top and long sleeve duster.  It doesn’t hide the belly as much as I’d like, but it’s supposed to be wrinkle proof and it’s fairly comfortable. 

For this trip, I am also trying a supplement kit and a tens unit that are both supposed to combat jet lag.  The supplement kit comes with supplements to fight inflammation and to help reset your circadian rhythm.  It also comes with blue light glasses and an app that tells you when to do what.  We went to Denver last night because there was talk of possible snow and if you have a morning flight, it is often easier to go down the night before and get a hotel than to mess with getting up 5 hours early and hoping traffic or weather doesn’t mess up your plans.  The jet lag app told me to go to sleep at 11:00, but I was tired at 9:00.  I forced myself to stay up, watching tv shows I didn’t really want to watch on the hotel room tv.  I spent a large portion of the night awake as I often do when not in my own bed.  Why do hotel rooms have so many lights?  People are here to sleep. 

I got up at 7:35am as my app told me to do.  I looked at my sleep data that my watch recorded.  I got a sleep score of 72.  That seems decent, but it didn’t feel decent.  It looked like I was awake most of the night from about 2:00am to 4:30am.  How is that not a lower sleep score?  Oh well, nothing to do about it now.

I put on my orange glasses that block out the blue light. I don’t quite understand that science.  I took my morning supplements and we headed out for breakfast.  When I got my coffee, I looked at the array of sugars and was instantly disappointed that there were no yellow packets.  I mentioned this and Richard looked at me like I was dumb.  They are right there.  Oh, yea, yellow glasses made the packets look white.  Then when I got my over medium eggs, I cut into the yolks and watched this off-white liquid run out.  Something’s wrong with my eggs.  That is not the color of eggs.  It had only been about 5 minutes since I couldn’t find the yellow sugar, but I had already forgotten about the glasses.  I took off my glasses and noticed the liquid was yellow.

After breakfast, Richard dropped me at the airport.  Have I mentioned before that I have a wonderful husband?  He didn’t have to take all this time to take me to the airport.  I took up half his day yesterday and will take up half of his day today. 

I found a bag tag kiosk and tried to print my bag tags.  It told me to go to the light blue area. I didn’t know what that meant and because of the glasses everything was red.  Nothing was blue.  I saw a different kiosk area and just decided to try that.  It was the right one.  Bags tagged and put on the belt in less than 5 minutes.

The pre-check line was longer than the other lines as usual – it kind of defeats the point of pre-check.  But, the lines moved fast – never stood still once.  While in line, I got 2 compliments on my cool glasses.  Huh, didn’t know being color blind with clip on orange glasses was fashionable.  The new-ish bag scanning equipment DIA has is slick and quick.  While I was waiting for my carry-ons to come out, the woman behind me commented that she loved my look, especially my outfit.  We chatted about where I was going.  She lived in Japan for a few years and was jealous I was going there.  She had loved living there. 

I arrived at my gate at 9:30am which was my goal time to get to the airport to begin with.  I got two more comments on my glasses in that short amount of time.  There was no line at the gate attendant so I went up and checked if there were any seats I could upgrade to.  There was and I could use miles to reduce the price.  I tried that yesterday and the website would only let me use money or miles, not both.  Great!  Now I look like I’m special and I will be sitting like I am special.  I also can go wait in the United lounge.  Even though the lounge is nothing spectacular, I think I am officially winning the airport!