day ten

i just realized i never posted my final memory leading up to the anniversary. it is a few days past, but better late than never? without further ado: our trip to seattle.

one lovely day in the fall, i was scrolling through my twitter feed aimlessly, likely avoiding something much more meaningful and rewarding. i ran across a tweet from asthmatic kitty (record label) announcing a limited christmas tour for sufjan stevens. seeing as sufjan is like MY FAVORITE EVER, i decided i should probably do what i could to get to a show. zomg! he will be in dallas on november 30! wait a sec... why does that look familiar? damn. mom's wedding. what else is on a weekend? ...seattle? hmmm.

*takatakataka* (that's the sound of sending a text)

"hey honey. want to go see sufjan stevens?"
"that sounds amazing! where?"
"it's in december."
"okay. do we have anything going on? where is it?"
"you love sufjan as much as i do, right?"
"yeah, but where is the concert mal?"
"k we got tickets!" (actually seth ordered tickets for me while i was at work... thanks, man!)

i have always been drawn to the west coast, and seattle is right on the top of my list of places i'd rather be. i had never had a chance to visit, so this really seemed like the perfect opportunity. i know you're thinking "wow. what a waste of money to fly to a city like that for a concert," but we have a southwest credit card (responsibly) and had earned quite a few miles. so, i found us some flights and voila! off to seattle we go!

as i have stated time and time again, our places of employment will really only allow us so many days off work. since they had been so graceful and flexible up to this point, we really didn't want to push it. the concert was on a saturday night so we left little rock early that morning and made our way west!

pre-take off breakfast at LIT

whoever scheduled our flight route has obviously never seen a map because we flew to albuquerque, new mexico, before we headed up. we had one of those weird layovers where you never actually get to  leave the plane, but you're stuck on the tarmac for an hour and a half. we gathered up our belongings and meticulously chose our seat for the next flight while the flight attendants cleaned up and made their rounds. if you have ever met my jett, you know that he was quickly engaged in conversation with everyone. the new pilots boarded the plane, so we decided we should probably bombard them and ask a bunch of dumb questions you've always wanted to ask a pilot. we got one poor guy to answer everything (is it hard to fly? do you get leg cramps? is it fun? do you ever fall asleep? can you do a barrel roll?). he then preceded to offer for us to sit in the cockpit and push some buttons. we had our asses in the seats before he finished asking. i asked if i could potentially crash the plane by pushing the amount of buttons i was pushing, and he just laughed nervously so i stopped. he offered to take our picture and seemed like he'd done it before. i asked him if he let a lot of people in the cockpit and he said "...well, i've never been asked by an adult..." and that, my friends, is why i love being a ricks.

isn't that a scary sight?

the plane eventually made its way to seattle and we flew over mt. ranier into the city. man! that was a sight! a picture wouldn't do it justice, so i'll just have to recommend that you visit it yourself one day. our dear sweet friend lilli picked us up at the airport and drove us to her place in west (i think?) seattle. jett and lilli went to high school together and we just absolutely adored seeing her! she was so kind as to let us into her home during her finals week AND to take us to dinner that night AAAAND to let us borrow her car when our taxi didn't show up after an hour. lilli walker: savior of the seattle shenanigans. we went to dinner at a terrible beauty, which is a local irish pub, where we had irish food and local beer and got to catch up with lil.

outside a terrible beauty

and then (after some taxi driver stood us up, the jerk!) we headed downtown to the neptune to go see sufjan play. i have often been referred to as a "hipster" by my sweet arkansan friends, to which i would say, hahahahaha. ahahha. ha. you have never been to seattle. you don't even know what a hipster is until you have been to see sufjan stevens play a christmas show in seattle. i have never seen more ugly christmas sweaters (nor will i ever) in all my days.

swoon

the venue itself was pretty small, which we have learned is something i adore. i love actually feeling like i am in the same room as the artist i am seeing. it looked like an old theater stage with a cathedral-style ceiling, only it had been completely decked out in tacky christmas paraphernalia. the name of the tour was "surfjohn stevens christmas sing-a-long: seasonal affective disorder yuletide disaster pageant on ice" and the show was about as bizarre and ridiculous as the name. i hope you know i mean that in the best way possible. there was a large "wheel of christmas!" on the back of the stage that determined which songs would be played next in the setlist while everyone had their own "hymnal" with the lyrics of the choices. they would spin the wheel, start singing, and we were fully expected to sing along. at first everyone seemed a little apprehensive, but as the night wore on (and the bar stayed busy), we were all a bit more comfortable with belting out our favorite christmas tunes. there was a guy behind us who was particularly proud of his vibrato (not an earned pride, just sayin').

wheel! of! christmas!

the set ranged from crazy, wacky, borderline obnoxious sufjan original christmas songs to peaceful hymns that we all know and love performed beautifully by sufjan, rosie, and the band. if you have never listened to sufjan stevens, please do so right meow. you are really missing out on one of the most talented musicians. his voice is nothing short of enchanting. he has the ability to completely silence a room full of loud, drunk hipsters yelling pretentious things at each other just by clearing his throat backstage. the man sings liquid gold. just throwing that out there. i would love to post a ton of amazing videos but a) you are not interested in that and b) my phone died mid-concert so jett has most of the videos on his computer. also youtube won't let me upload the one i keep trying to upload.

there were plenty of wacky songs as well as several traditional songs, as mentioned above. the best (and most silent) parts of the show where when he would declare a "break from christmas," pick up his banjo, and bring peace to the universe (aka sing) by singing "vito's ordination song" and "for the widows in paradise..." i didn't get any pictures from those moments because i stood there watching him play, with my phone and camera both probably on the ground because i had dropped them and not realized it. hell i'll be lucky if i find out i wasn't drooling.

the show was a delight. and it ended with a magical production of "christmas unicorn," the twelve-minute shitshow featuring one of sufjan's newest christmas originals. jett has a really cool video of this one so if you want to see it you'll have to hunt him down and remind him that he even went to seattle in december and then explain to him who sufjan stevens is again and THEN maybe he'll show you. just close your eyes and imagine lasers, glitter, silly string, balloon hats, streamers, christmas-themed inflatables, etc and voila! there you have it.

sufjan the magnificent

we spent the night at lilli's apartment then woke up and took a taxi to pike place to do a little bit of exploring before we had to go to the airport. it really was the shortest trip of all time. seeing the market was so cool! it was chilly and drizzly out that morning, rather perfect for seattle.

seattle at its finest

we wandered around the market for an hour or so, stopping at fruit and vegetable stands, fresh fish stands (they yell a lot at those), and through a bunch of hand-crafted well... crap. we picked up an ornament with the needle on it from an old hippie that couldn't make change (it was $7 and we gave him a $10...) and then stopped at the FIRST STARBUCKS EVER WHICH IS JUST SO APPROPRIATE AND FANTASTIC. i was obviously much more enthusiastic here than jett was, but that just makes him sound normal. i ordered my regular and felt like a n00b (even though i used all the correct technical terms taught to me by my best friend/ex-barista hannah). it was a dream.

first starbucks store ever at pike place

a souvenir coffee mug and several dollars later, we hailed a taxi and headed to the airport to make our way back home. we made it through security (which is a challenge with carry-on only bags if you ask me...) and had ivan's fish & chips in the airport before we boarded the plane to head home. i realize that's not the best place to get the iconic fish & chips, but we were limited on time, people.

that wraps up our final adventure! sorry it's a week late. even more sorry that none of you noticed.

xo.

day nine

alright, i had to post this one in a few parts because it is just SO FANTASTIC and it's going to take me all of eternity to author.

neither me nor jett had ever had the opportunity to travel overseas before, so we started getting the bug. imagine us getting a travel bug. we looked at several different places before something really spoke to us: japan. our bestie for the restie cooper (sorry i said that just then, you guys) has been living over there for a few years now while teaching engrish. he was the best man for our wedding and flew all the way home just to be a part of it. plus, it's japan. so duh. we looked up the flights, did about 100+ hours of math problems and budgeting, cried a little bit, and bought the tickets.

because i work in a dental office, it is easiest for me to plan things out way in advance so that i can just not schedule appointments while i'm gone instead of having to reschedule eight days' worth of toof cleanin's. so we planned this one about seven months out so i would have time to convince my bosses to let me off and enough time to block it off before i schedule appointments. this means that we had seven months to plan the trip, which is great/terrible for me. i did a ton of research and booked a few of our hotels while looking for places to go and things to do. i mean, we had an entire country to choose from.

after several months of planning and dozens of packing lists (i have never been more serious), the time finally arrived for us to pack up and leave home for eleven days. since we were going to be doing quite a bit of train travel, we had to narrow it down to one suitcase a piece. that is really difficult for me, seeing as i probably pack more for a weekend getaway than i did for this whole trip. that probably doesn't mean much, though. the only unfortunate thing was that i was picked up an ugly cold the day before we left, but my doctor sent me with antibiotics and steroids to fight it.

we flew from little rock to dallas to lax before boarding our plane to tokyo. i was extremely disappointed that i did not see any celebrities in lax. i think i'll be okay eventually, but if you all could remember me during this difficult time, i would really appreciate it. we got on our plane to fly twelve hours to narita (tokyo) and got all settled in. i reached down to plug my phone in (we read online somewhere that there were phone chargers on the plane) and... it was a dc outlet that needed a car charger and i had an ac charger and 30% battery life on my phone. so jett told the flight attendants that his wife was ill and he HAD to go buy me medicine so they had to let him off the plane. before you think "oh my god! that is so sweet!" i want you all to consider the fact that jett bought me this phone charger because he knew that i would be pestering him for twelve solid hours if i did not have alternative entertainment. just kidding, it was the most heroic move of all time. ten points to gryffindor.

eight hours into the flight

we left little rock at 6:00am on thursday morning and we arrived in tokyo at 4:00pm on friday, which was about 2:00am at home. we worked our way through customs and finally found cooper patiently awaiting our arrival. let me tell you, if you've ever needed to see a friend before, it's after twenty hours of travel into a foreign land. he led us to currency exchange and to a booth we found online that let us rent a wi-fi hotspot for the week we would be in the country (which was the most amazing and life-saving discovery of all time now and forevermore). then we hopped on what was probably two trains but felt like twelve and dragged our jet-lagged asses to our hostel for the weekend. cooper booked us a private room, which was awesome because i didn't have to worry about some techno-blasting swede watch me sleep. it was a traditional japanese-style room, meaning there were bamboo floors and we slept on mats. they were shockingly comfortable, which may have been related to the fact that i hadn't slept in thirty hours.

but before we went to sleep that night (because we got to the hostel at like 6:00pm), we met cooper's friend mai that lives in the city for dinner. we had originally planned to go to a sushi place, but they were too crowded and i am so glad we ended up here instead! i am also really grateful that we had cooper and mai to translate and order for us. could have been ugly. we decided to go all out and let them order whatever for us. and they went to town. i tried to journal quite a bit throughout the trip, and i wrote down the entire menu for the evening and feel like sharing (and you're reading my blog so you have to read it. HA!):

   -carrot + radish relish
   -dried potatoes
   -edamame (sounds normal so far, right?)
   -kimchi, which is a spicy korean cabbage
   -bacon (the best ever) with a salad
   -cabbage leaves with miso mayo for dipping
   -horse... served with a raw egg (the most serious i have ever been)
   -sashimi (salmon, squid, mackerel, and tuna)
   -bone-in chicken, which was a shocking discovery
   -tofu with sea salt + green onion
   -dried fish that you ate from the bone (looked like a tim burton movie)
   -yebisu, a japanese malt beer

i know a lot of you are probably over a toilet now, but it was all really delicious. there were a few things that i didn't care for, but food is such a huge part of immersing yourself into another culture and why in the hell would you not do that in japan?

so the next day, we started with breakfast in the hostel. side note: they apparently don't eat breakfast in japan. i mean, they eat a morning meal, but it's not breakfast. the hostel had bread so fresh you forgot who you were for a second and hard-boiled eggs, and that was the closest we got to breakfast all week. anyway, we took some trains to asakusa from the hostel, which is a temple in downtown tokyo. there was a festival going on the day we visited, so we got to see a cool parade and take some photos.

senso-ji in asakusa

we wandered through the main road/street vendors and over to the main temple. the smoke you see in the picture above is from the "healing incense" that you are supposed to breathe in for... well healing, obviously. c'mon guys. i mouth-breathed because i was dying of a cold and i'm PREEEEETTY sure that (plus steroids and antibiotics) totally healed me so it's cool; then we drew our fortunes. i drew a "good fortune" and jett drew the "best fortune" from the wall o' fortunes. we were supposed to tie them onto something but we both just pocketed ours, which is sounding like really bad luck as i look back.

the boys and their fortunes

we wandered around a large park in the middle of tokyo and around cooper's favorite lake before stopping for our first real sushi meal. for such tiny people, they really eat a lot in one sitting. it took me some time to get used to eating so much. we then traveled to akihibara "electric town" so jett and cooper could do some gaming while i awkwardly stood by. it was easily the most overwhelming place that anyone has ever been. imagine the loudest, most obnoxious arcade game you can think of. multiply that by fifty and add five stories of it plus indoor smoking and voila! you are in akihibara. the boys could probably each write eight pages on that, but i will move right along. after that, we took a train to harajuku and spent some time looking around the shops and stores and searching for gwen stefani (get it? harajuku girls? oh, nevermind).

shibuya crossing

we stopped at a coffee shop for some espresso and people-watching. the sun was down by 5:00pm over there. it was strange! mai met us again and we all traveled into shibuya (downtown tokyo) for dinner. we crossed through shibuya crossing, which i can't find my video of because my computer lost quite a few of my files. it's an intersection that thousands of people cross through every day and it was cray. see above photo. then we stopped and had dinner at a ramen restaurant. the ramen here is NOT like the ramen back home. it is crazy delicious, though still relatively cheap (especially for tokyo). you pick what you want and buy a ticket before you go in the restaurant and then walk in and hand your ticket over and they bring you your food asap. again, giant portions and very quick eating. plus lots and lots of slurping. then we went back to the hostel for the night and had some strong zero... ask cooper about it.

downtown tokyo

day two (yes, we are just now to day two) consisted of my waking up way too early because jet lag took me like it's own personal bitch, eating eggs and bread at the hostel, then taking a trip to an outer town called kamakura to see daibutsu, the "great buddha" statue. it was about an hour outside of tokyo. we had a delicious lunch at a local restaurant. all of the lunches consisted of something like this: fresh sashimi, soup, salad, pickled something, rice, and a "dessert" like red bean paste. i really enjoyed eating such different food!

daibutsu

we headed back to tokyo after that to meet up with mai to visit the meiji shrine in the heart of tokyo. that's one of the strangest things about tokyo - it is this enormous urban metropolis with thirty billion people that is filled with the tallest buildings and the craziest train system of all time, but there is still a place for the serene, traditional tremples and shrines. it was really wonderful having both cooper and mai for all these situations because they taught us what NOT to do. another of cooper and mai's friends met us as we went to dinner a yakatori restaurant. this is a place where they bring you trays upon trays of raw meat and vegetables plus a little basin of fire for cookin'. i ate more than i'd like to admit at this time.

our final stop for the day was the tokyo sky tree. cooper got tickets for us several months before so we were able to take a trip to the very top of the 350m tower. it's the tallest tower in the world and the second tallest structure if i'm not mistaken (and i probably am so don't fact check me). talk about a view. you could literally see the curvature of the earth in the distance. afterward, we hopped on the last shinkansen (bullet train) and headed toward cooper's hometown of kani.

...and this concludes the first of the japan posts. i have a life, y'all.

i will continue this saga in the next few weeks. sorry to disappoint!