Good morning! I see from the blog that Rachel went ahead and worked on writing up some things before going to bed. I, of course, went face down right after the dinner and walk and got up incredibly early.

Rachel is completely asleep inside, which makes sense, if it’s 7 in the morning. I’ve been up since 6, started to do slight rearrangement of my stuff for walking around, and discovered this nice terrace coming out of our place. Gee, our host, was incredibly nice, and came out for dinner with no warning, and showed us some stuff even though we were basically out of our minds from lack of rest.

The place we’re staying at, this combination music studio and apartment, is a wonder of engineering. The amount of stuff that is in this space and the way that design fits in with feeling both spacious and economic, really makes me like oversized homes even less.

As the fact that I’m awake and talking about Rachel being asleep (and Rachel having written an entry last night while I was asleep) shows, we have slightly different schedules and slightly different ways we do things. The hardest part of us as a couple has always been synchronizing different outlooks into something that we can both work with. But over the years, it’s really become a pretty minor consideration and effort compared to how much we do have in common. For example, we have effortlessly chosen all sorts of places to eat and visit while out here, and on our walks together, the idea of going into further and further interesting fractal experiences as we stumble upon them fills us both with excitement.

This whole trip is a dream of mine. In my late twenties, head agog with anime and Japanese video games, I had this vision of the place that made me want to come and get involved in everything involving the city. Various ranges of finance and opportunity prevented me from doing it all throughout my thirties, and here in my forties I finally visit the country for the first time. This is an incredibly long time coming!

We’ll see how well we balance both writing about what we’re doing and doing it. Here’s to the beginning of a great trip!