Flying Poles

As my departure draws near, I brace myself for my three flights (no direct flights to where I'm going).  I used to be terrified of flying.  Got so bad, I needed meds to endure even a short flight.  I mean, you don't even know who's driving!

The fear, fortunately, is no more, but the physical discomfort of being stuck in a metal can in the sky remains.  I can’t afford business class, so it’s the ever-shrinking coach for me.  As if the tight quarters aren’t bad enough, being thousands of feet up in the air makes me blow up like a balloon.  About an hour or two into a flight, I feel the hold of my shoes tightening and pretty soon, my entire body feels like the poor New Zealander's who got himself stuck on a compressed air hose: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13537084.  Once I made the mistake of wearing heels on a transatlantic flight.  Took them off for a few hours to flex my legs and when I tried to put them back on, my feet wouldn’t budge.  An unforgettable experience of a barefoot deplaning. 

It’s one thing to go across a few states and completely another to go across several countries and an ocean.  Plus, and this is somewhat anachronistic, I don’t think I can ever get used to the short time it takes to be transported into an entirely different reality.  Take my trip to Japan as an example.  Here I was, just hanging out in Missouri, and twenty hours later I was in Tokyo.  The two realities had little in common.  Flying doesn’t provide a good transition between different realities either.  If anything, it exacerbates the weirdness.  Whenever I take these transoceanic flights I feel stuck in some sort of an airplane netherworld.  I am neither here nor there.  I’m cramped in my seat, the cabin pressure making me woozy. 

I really didn’t relish the idea of a thirteen-hour transpacific flight to Tokyo.  My lower back hurt in anticipation.  My anxiety was not eased when I discovered that the flight was actually over fourteen hours long.  I remember that at one point during the flight I was sure that we only had a couple of hours to go.  Just positively sure that it was almost over.  I asked a flight attendant but she informed me that we were over seven hours away.  I cried a little and not on the inside. 

Dear Lufthansa, 

Please make an upgrading error.  I won’t tell, I promise.  I'll be on my best behavior.  I will definitely not get drunk, crawl on all fours, and grab other passengers' feet.*  No one will even suspect that I really belong in coach.

Sincerely,

Polka Dot 

*true story: a friend of mine took the Polish airline LOT a few years back.  One of the male passengers got drunk and did just that.  Flight attendants were not amused.   I haven't taken LOT in a while but a few years ago did so from time to time.  It is undoubtedly true that many of the male passengers imbibe large quantities of free liquor.  Contrary to the stereotype, however, they do so out of fear and not celebration.  In fact, as I observed, many of the men are afraid of flying, but in order to stave off an anxiety attack and, even more importantly, to appear macho, they drink.  The creepy crawler obviously drank right past the point of no return. 

Japanese Poles

Back from Poletown, making preparations for my annual journey to the motherland.  This time, my visit is a bit belated as over last Christmas I opted for a trip to Japan.  A Pole in Japan is not as strange as it sounds.  Besides, Eastern Europeans and Asians share a gene pool reinforced by centuries of mutual conquests.  

I loved everything, and I mean everything, about Tokyo and the surrounding area (except for little white fish served cold.  I thought they were crunchy little noodles and took a mouthful. Surprise!). 

Soon after my arrival in Tokyo, I discovered a Polish-Japanese connection.  Ayako found a website for a bed and breakfast not far from my hometown.  It’s called Villa Akiko and run by Akiko Miwa, a Japanese woman who has made Poland her home: http://www.akiko.pl/index.html

Akiko built the hotel from the ground up, which wasn’t easy since there were no roads leading up to the land she purchased.  She speaks fluent Polish (she didn’t know it when she arrived in 1989) and gets along with górale (or highlanders, a particular ethnic group of which I count myself a member) who reside in the area.  The górale are a famously difficult and stubborn people, but apparently what Pani Akiko wants, Pani Akiko gets, and the górale of the surrounding villages adore her.  She’s involved in the life of the nearby village, Harklowa, and has founded an environmental organization in the area.

Polish National Geographic published an interview with Pani Akiko, not because she’s a Japanese woman living in Poland (there are others), but because she lives in the mountainous middle of nowhere among the górale: http://www.national-geographic.pl/artykuly/pokaz/mam-dusze-mezczyzny/.  She’s my new hero.  I hope to visit Villa Akiko when I’m in Poland.

One of my favorite adventures in Japan involved a trip to the mountains to soak in an onsen, traditional Japanese baths.  Ayako took me to Nikko, home of the famous Tokugawa Ieyasu shrine.  

   

We stayed at a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn.

 
The Nikko style tofu dinner and breakfast there were incredible. 

Specific procedures must be followed at the onsen.  For Westerners like me, the ryokan provides a handy dandy guide complete with pictures.

After a week in Tokyo, Ayako was sick and tired of my questions.  Admittedly, some were just downright stupid but, in my defense, there is a fourteen-hour time difference between St. Louis and Tokyo.  Jet lag was a mammoth!  She flung the guide in my general direction and told me to memorize it.  Except for one mistake, all went well.  I scrubbed and rinsed in the correct order and manner and soaked to my heart’s delight.  The one error, however, came at a great cost.  Ayako told me that I could never be “a Japanese lady” all because once we put on the yukata and haori the ryokan provided, I immediately took off my undergarments.  This was apparently a grave error as it is inadvisable to walk downstairs and across the outside bridge leading to the onsen wearing only the yukata and haori, both of which tie at the waist.  

A highly impractical proposition, if you ask me, since the baths are gender specific, and all wear birthday suits anyway. 

While in Tokyo, I discovered just how much I enjoy taking photos.  Though I only have what Poles refer to as an “idiot cam,” some of the photos came out well enough to be framed.  This is one of my favorites.  I took it at Edo Wonderland (A Tokugawa era theme park outside of Tokyo):

During my time in Chicago, I snuck a little Japanese time away from Poletown and took Ewa and her adorable daughter Gaia to Rolls N’ Bowls, a tiny and really good restaurant in Lincoln Square.

 
I felt it necessary, however, to finish my Poletown adventure with a Polish meal.