Departure - 7 Days

It is October 2nd and in a week I will be heading for Japan for 9 weeks.  There are some odd aspects to leaving for that long which only become apparent after you experience them.  For one thing, there are a surprising number of codes, passwords and other vital pieces of data carried in one's RAM memory which we remember because we use them daily to retrieve phone messages, get cash from a bank autoteller, log on to various internet accounts and such. This data can erode and even be lost over months of disuse.  ("Did I include all four digits of my wife's birth year or just the last two?  Did I get the century right?"  "Did I use my Mom's birth maiden name, her adoptive one, or both?" "Did I capitalize my favorite dog's name?") It's also a bit odd getting back in the car here after some months of driving on the other side of the road.  Another aspect is going from being "all that" on tour to "who's that?" when I get home.  When you enter a restaurant in Japan it is common for every single employee to welcome you ("Irrashaimase!").  As you might imagine, that is not so common here in Southern California.  I remember after being in rehearsals in Tokyo that we would go to a nearby restaurant and watch the evening Disney fireworks show as we ate our dinner.  At home the only fireworks are if I don't put my plate in the dishwasher.  So now I'm spending my days preparing to conduct 90 minutes or so of music, figuring out if my tux shirts still fit, and getting the house and cars in shape to function in my absence.

Somewhere in Tokyo

Somewhere in Tokyo is an old-style composition book with 10 years of journal entries.  One of those Holstein Cow,  mottled black-and-white cardboard-covered jobs with the cloth tape binding they used to use in school.   Killing time, as one so often does while traveling, I must have left it sitting somewhere, distracted after riffling through my Japanese vocabulary cards or searching the Japan Times for baseball scores or other news from home.  For some reason I always wrote in it using a fountain pen. With its decade-long list of names, places and events, it is amazing how often I wish I had it back. It was not always kind in it's portrayals but I think it was more revealing in what it said about me than what I said about others.  The person who found it would have seen that I know a lot less now that I thought I knew 10 years ago.  Anyway, it was my traveling companion for 10 years and now it's gone.  So this blog will replace that for the time being. I always considered my journal as private (though it was open to my wife, of course) but events have shown that presumption to be false.  The Bible says that there is nothing hidden that won't someday be revealed, so this will get a jump on the process.  Please enjoy.