We’re back in the USA! After a brief visit to Korea to see some friends there, we took the 13-odd hour flight to Los Angeles and we’re now here, safe and sound and getting over some tremendous jet lag.
We weren’t there for very long so we didn’t do much other than hang out with some friends. But we did hang out with friends! We went out to dinner, did some karaoke, and went to visit the church that had come to Hakodate a few weeks ago! The pastor even did his sermon half in English for us!
We did do a little bit of sightseeing, which was fun. This old neighborhood is actually a normal neighborhood – as in currently populated. Like half the houses here have signs on the door saying “This is a home! People live here! Please don’t crowd the step for pictures!” I don’t think I’d want to live there, but there are parts of that that would be fun.
It’s a bit funny being back in Los Angeles after having been in Japan. It’s obviously the same as we remember it, but it’s also… like, worse? It doesn’t quite hit the same after being in Japan.
We first noticed it actually in Korea, at the airport, waiting to board the plane. In Japan and Korea, people wait politely and planes board from back to front, very efficient and neat. But when you’re flying United with a bunch of Americans, they’re all crowding the gate immediately, and loading the plane from front to back, and it just immediately felt worse.
That continued when we got to the airport in San Francisco, where the food was all mediocre and overpriced – $5 for a drip coffee, $15 for a tuna salad sandwich! It just feels worse, man.
Which is not to say it’s all bad. I do love LA and, while I know it’s an odd thing to say, I love the way it smells. There’s just so many different plants around, walking past a dozen yards gives you a glimpse at like five different landscapes. All the plants smell different and they all blend together into a fun panoply of scents.
We also love being back with the McFarlands! We’ve stayed at their place so much, sleeping on their sofa bed feels like being home and sleeping in our own bed. We also love their pets almost as much as we love our own, so it’s great to see them again. We want to get back to Japan ASAP, but staying here in the meantime won’t exactly be a chore.
To answer the question we know everybody has: no, we still don’t have a timeline, and until we have a timeline, we don’t have any idea what our plans for the US are. The McFarlands have very kindly offered to let us crash with them basically indefinitely, so we’ll hang out here until we know how long we’ll be in the States for – if it’s a short time, we’ll probably just stay in LA and then go right from here back to Japan, but in the more likely scenario that it’s a month or more, we’ll probably plan a trip back to Virginia, Florida, or more likely both.
We’ll share more info when we know more, but we’re having a good time in the meantime!