TOKYO — Calling the train we're riding into central Tokyo the "Narita Express" is generous, as it will take 85 minutes to reach our destination from the international airport.
But it's time that can be put to use brushing up on Japanese vocabulary to create the illusion of fluency when dealing with a hotel's front desk. Commandeering my stepson's pocket-sized phrasebook, I commence committing its "Finding Accommodations" section to memory.
Yoyaku = reservation. Makura = pillow. Spair no makura = extra pillow.
"Won't they speak English at the hotel?" queries my wife, preferring an attentive husband over one looking like a student cramming for finals.
She'll learn that conversation and socialization aren't prized activities on commuter trains, especially once jet lag seizes control of her eyelids.
The Japanese are, in fact, masters at hiding in plain sight; creating private spaces in tight public quarters. If not catnapping — another skill they've perfected — most train riders have their eyes glued to their cell phones, or their ears connected to an iPod or similar device, or their noses buried in a book or magazine.
My family is joining me traipsing places I came to know as a Mormon missionary in Yokohama and the surrounding Kanagawa region during the late 1970s.
Over these next four whirlwind days, I hope they'll gain similar measures of appreciation for this island nation filled with curiosities and contradictions that's given the world Three Wise Monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil) and one insipid animated cat (Hello Kitty).
Sensory overload is ensured as modern and frenetic-paced Japan awaits us in underground train station labyrinths, Akihabara's Electric Street, and conveyor belt sushi bars.
All this is beautifully counterbalanced by a land that preens for travel posters. Rich in tradition and texture, it's filled with serene and ornate temples and shrines like those found at Nikko and Kamakura, striking views of Mt. Fuji (on a clear day), and colorful silk kimonos.
I feel fortunate to be returning to the scene of my personal two-year epiphany. Like many LDS men, my Japanese mission was life transforming — the springboard for any modest successes I've achieved since. It's where I learned to lead, as well as to follow.
Surviving into middle-middle age unfortunately chips away at that foundation. Aspartame gets substituted for life's original sweetness. One time swagger and zeal are replaced by jadedness and lassitude.
Maybe that was at the root of inexplicably mothballing my Japanese years ago. Repeated opportunities to converse with NuSkin conventioneers direct from Japan in downtown Salt Lake City, or swapping superlatives with Japanese tourists marveling at the striking vistas at Zion National Park or Bryce Canyon, passed without so much as a konichi wa from me.
On good days, my command of spoken Japanese was serviceable at best and reading or writing limited to the earliest grade levels.
Now I'd be thrilled coaxing my gray matter into rekindling even the smallest linguistic fire from before.
So, when our train's wheels start talking to me in Japanese, I wonder if it's Freudian, before recognizing the watershed moment.
I'm thinking in Japanese, substituting the Japanese translation for its English equivalent. I hear the Japanese gatan-goton — the sound trains make traveling on their tracks — inside my head in place of the English clickety-clack.
What would I think of next?
I didn't have long to wait. Words and phrases, languishing unused and forgotten over parts of three decades, began filling my head like kernels popping inside a microwaveable bag of Orville Redenbacher's. And I was eating it up.
All evidently catalogued in an unfamiliar annex of my brain awaiting just such a sublime encore. Proof to me that our human capacities greatly exceed our human frailities.
The semi-smirk I was left wearing — a combo of incredulousness, topped by bemusement — belied the profundity. I'd been back in Japan fewer than two hours and life tasted sweeter already.
e-mail: chuck@desnews.com