Bus/Kusama

I get out of the plane. I get through immigration and customs in ten minutes. It’s all so easy. They don't look in my bags even! There isn’t a flood of people waiting for us at the narita airport, just flocks here and there. I try to figure out phone numbers from my Verizon phone which only will work at this airport. I buy a ticket, I talk to Okaasan for the first time, she is a baby chick, she is so kind. The bus stop that is mine is #9. The Bus to Kichijoji Station comes at 5:35 sharp, I have been in line for 20 minutes and have mistaken only one bus to have been mine. I take my guitar on the bus too. When it comes, I give my bag to the baggage guy who places it into the body of the bus, I walk into the ear and cash my ticket, fit my guitar up in the shelf, and sit down next to a window on the right side near the back. I meet Mike in a minute. He asks in very proper English whether it would be alright if he sat next to me and I say yes. He is married, a father of children, a businessman of business, a young father, my tour guide. He shows me the names and ways and reasons of the city on the otherside of the glass and of the bus itself, what the bus driver is saying. Apologizing for the traffic. There must be an accident. A police car with a red spinning siren rushes by. Rainbow bridge passes without us over it, the usual route. This bus driver is going another way trying to dodge the traffic probably. It’s gotten dark and we pass ginza. Very expensive, he says, the most expensive place in Tokyo to buy. Kichijoji is close, I think of waking Mike (I have his business card in my wallet), he wakes up on his own. Outside, the air is the coolest Japanese air that I’ve felt in my life. A woman is saying my name, she is mine. She is with a man who shakes my hand. He is mine. They take me into a taxi just before a group of girls. The woman, Okaasan, talks to me in Japanese, sits with me in the back, I try hard, I smile, stop, I stop a lot. We’re home and I enter between them. Soft, low bells ring on the other side of the door, fixed at the top. My room, past the laundry room, is beautiful, and I move in. I take a shower, then we have a first dinner, tonkatsu, pork cutlet. The house favorite I think. There are adventures that I have to write about in hindsight, the first two days have been spent recalling the first day. Note to self: remember the bicycle ride, the college campus, the gym, the grocery store, the restaurant, the next day, the bicycle ride, the college, the department store, the rain, the cellphone store, the umbrella, the parking garage, the music at home.