Pictures, oh do I have pictures and I promise to post some up as soon as the jet lag from hell wears off. Tokyo was amazing. It made me seriously homesick for major big-city stuff — ach, the view from my bro’s apartment!! Tokyo is New York without the dirt and with serious politeness. Though, I must say, I felt a huge sigh of relief when I got back to Tel Aviv and heard Hebrew and got to elbow my way to customs because like the politeness was cool and all but I felt seriously awkward with people bowing at me all the time — I had a frequent urge to yell, yo get a backbone! You are my equal not my inferior and so stop bowing and scraping!

But bowing and scraping aside it was awesome. The wedding was the most beautiful I have ever attended. There aren’t even words to describe it and so I’ll let the pictures do the work (soon soon). I am planning to learn Japanese and am planning to start that project in December as soon as I get back from the conference in England. I have to be able to communicate with the future niece or nephew that will hopefully come next year and with the new side of the family that speaks no English. Communication was ehhhh interesting :) Another way of saying that is to say that none of us knew what the other of us were talking about. Except my bro who is Japanese pro. He was so fluent my jaw was on the floor. He is more fluent after not quite 2 years than I am in Hebrew now.

I got home really really late last night/early morning. I’d thought I was going to recoup a day or some hours or something on the way back since I lost so many going there. Wrong. Way wrong. And I’d hoped that the flights might not be full (they were only maybe half full on the way there and so I was able to lay down and sleep with the empty seats next to me) but they were jammed to the gills. On the leg from Paris to Tel Aviv it was not only full but I had a screaming small child in front of me, one directly next to me, and two right behind me. I nearly lost my mind and i definitely lost out on any chance of sleep.

I got home well after midnite to a house that simply stank. I mean, there is no polite way to say it. Peeeeeeuuuuuwwwwww. On the other hand, it wasn’t as much of a disaster as I’d been fearing. Muffin simply turned the bathroom floor into her personal litterbox and I was “ok” with that, in that I could pick up (gag) and then hose down the floor –which I did within minutes of entering the apartment. The official litterbox room was another story, as the small kittens had scratched open the unopened bag of litter and spread it to the four corners of the room. That’s all they did (well mostly) with it. The long and short of it is that between getting home, cleaning, heading out to work and now finally getting home, I still haven’t slept. I think it has been like 38 hours now? I’m not sure, as that whole time-change deal has messed with my tiny little mind but it has been since I awoke at 6 a.m. Monday morning Tokyo time since I got any shut-eye. I have a ton of email to do and must get ready for my classes tomorrow so I’m hoping to get in bed in about 4 or 5 hours from now.