4
Jun
A Man Out of Time
Topic: Family and Friends, Japan 2007
Well, that was awful.
I didn’t sleep on our flight back from Tokyo, and then I went almost 4 days with nothing more than a half dozen 30 minute - 90 minute naps.
It’s a 13 hour time difference between Tokyo and Philadelphia, so it’s a complete reversal of night and day. Eidan and Kai took the slow road to adjusting to the time change, and they each came at with different schedules. Eidan was sleeping the first half of the night, and then around 1 AM or so, he would decide he was done sleeping. It’s time to play, daddy! But Kai couldn’t fall asleep at all until about 2 AM. So at any given point I was up with at least one of them.
But I’m happy to report that for the past two nights they’ve both been going to bed on time and sleeping reasonably well until morning. So I’ve managed to make a dent in my sleep deficit and I’m mostly functional again. Tomorrow they’re both off to school (Kai’s school also provides daycare, and Eidan is old enough to go now) and I’m off to work. I’ll just be part-time until Maria’s back in a few weeks.
On several occasions this week I was laughing at myself - being sleep deprived is like being drunk, in that your reasoning abilities are totally shot, and trying to string together words coherently in a conversation requires a lot of concentration. You don’t slur your words like a drunk though - instead you tend to choose the wrong words, or just leave words out. When I took the boys grocery shopping, I kept saying “sumimasen” to people (Japanese for “excuse me”) as I navigated the aisles, and I kept telling Kai to stop leaning on the stroller, when I meant to say cart.
Another difference is that you don’t lose your motor skills when you’re sleep deprived, which is good, because in the middle of all this I bought a new car. We sold our cars before we left for Tokyo, so I had nothing here to drive. Maria and I had already settled on exactly what we wanted, so fortunately I didn’t have to think through any of that. It’s a Toyota Prius. While we were in Tokyo I was blissfully unaware of gas prices here, but seeing them at over $3 a gallon has reaffirmed our choice of the Prius (it’s rated at 60 miles/gallon). The Prius’ are selling like hotcakes right now, so there wasn’t much opportunity to haggle over the price, but that’s just as well, as I don’t think I was up for it anyway…
I also want to mention the first things I noticed coming back to the States. After being away so long, I was curious to see what would jump out at me. On arriving in Chicago, I was taken aback by all the fat people! One thing I’ll say for the Japanese is that they’re in a lot better shape than we are. And on arriving in Philadelphia, I was startled at how dirty everything was. Tokyo is an amazingly clean city, and it was easy to get used to that. Kai proved to be a better American than me though - the first thing he noticed was the American flag.
June 5th, 2007 at 2:48 am
How are you liking the Prius? We really want to get one as well, as our old Honda is getting pretty long in the tooth.
June 6th, 2007 at 6:50 am
A Man Out of Time. Nice Elvis reference! Welcome home, dude!