Stepping off the plane and back into our life here is surreal. The sights and sounds are familiar. Drab grey high-rise buildings and cement-block walls. Neon-Rainbow colored cartoonish advertisements. Quiet voices, noisy traffic. The smells are the same. A mix of garlic and sesame on suits headed to soak in nightly baths. Even the humid-warm Tokyo air feels the same. Damp, unmoving and clinging longer than desired. It's like someone picked us up from our American life and just dropped us back into Japan....almost like we never left. Almost like the last months away never happened. Our bodies may be in one world, but our minds feel like they have been left behind in the other. Sweet, but strange.
Narita airport greets us. After pulling all our luggage on a free cart through service-filled, orderly immigration and customs, we board a very expensive, but very convenient 3 hour bus ride that lets us off just around the corner from our house. With my working Japanese i-phone in hand, Tim is called and waiting for us at the station. The boys are hungry (When are boys not hungry?). So a bleary-eyed trio stop at the convent store that offers us the missed favorites of our Asian home. You know, like seaweed wrapped cold rice balls filled with salmon and don't forget, vinegar flavored cold rice in a fried tofu pocket. A contented, tired sigh. We made it. Back in Japan. Sweet, but strange.
