When Things Go Wrong...They Are Actually Right.

I am sitting here in the living room of a house that is technically on American soil.... Despite the fact that I am in Japan... And as I looked back on today I realized something. 

I am really, very glad that I have time here... You know, in Japan.

Honestly, the plan for the day was great. We would wander around, just him and me, looking for cool and interesting things to do along the way. In the craziness of our anniversary weekend (one year....wahoo!) we forgot to go to the ATM and get yen. We realized this after we got off the subway, in a town where we had the genious idea of riding up the Tokyo Tower. 

Beautiful, isn't it? 

I think it went something like this...

AJ: Grace, I don't think we have enough money to get in the Tokyo Tower.

Me: Okay, well how much money do we have?

AJ: openes wallet... Silence.

There was nothing in there. 

Needless to say, we were both shocked. I remembered that I had needed to put more money on the train pass... And without thinking we had used up all of our ¥! 

So, instead we walked around and eventually made our way back to the trains. We convinced ourselves that we had enough money to make it home. Fortunately, we ran into a nice American family who offered to trade us, dollar for yen. Without them we would still be in Ebisu. 

We rushed through...train after train... Hoping and praying that the money would last all the way to Fussa. Thankfully, it did. 

There were a couple times yesterday when I felt like our anniversary weekend had bee hijacked. Things had gone wrong on multiple accounts and it was just so.... frustrating. All the planning AJ had done, wasted. All the excitement for the expectation i had built up inside me... dissolved. It wasn't until later in the evening, when things finally came together, that I was really able to think about how lucky I am. 

This is in fact a picture of a picture of us taken by the staff at The Welligton (where we had dinner last night). They print it for you and everything! So fancy!!

But really, it was so fancy. I've never been to a place that fancy. Anyways.....

Then today, things went wrong again! I thought to myself... when is this trail of bad luck going to end? I wasn't mad... Hungry? Yes. Tired? Yes. Tired of walking? Yes yes yes! But I wasn't mad... And once I got home, I realized why.

We still have time here. 

If we were here on a vacation, simply as tourists... any mishap could drastically change the trip. One of our seven precious days was wasted on bad luck! But our situation isn't like that at all....

Miss a session at the Temple? That's okay... Go next week!

Did the rain keep you from going to the Orange Shrine? That fine, we can go once it stops raining.

Run out of ¥ and miss a bunch of cool things you had planned? That's okay... We can plan it all for another Saturday. 

Our time here is this inexplicably complicated mess between being a tourist and being here to live. We do technically live here... But we are only here for a little while. We aren't necessarily tourists... But we want to do all the touristy things. At first, it was frustrating. But now I see the benefit. Because we are here to live (no matter how short of a time it is) we are given more time. I don't feel the need to be frustrated that our weekend didn't work out the way we wanted it to. I had a wonderful time with AJ, because of the mishaps.

And I'm sure it will be a funny story to tell...

Hey sweetie, remember that one time, on our one year anniversary, when everything went wrong and we almost got incoherently lost in Japan with not a single ¥ to our name? 

See what I mean? It is a great story.

C:

G

They put us in the Indiana room.... How did they know? 

We couldn't go up the Tokyo Tower... So we did the next best thing. Got a picture with this shrinked  version. We also saw a monkey comedian show. I don't know how to explain it... But that monkey was so funny. 

I really have a good man, don't I?