Waking up from a strangely vivid dream

The line to pick up my rental car is taking forever.

It feels a bit strange to not feel conspicuous for once. No one around me realizes that I haven't been in the US for the past eight months. To at once feel a bit out of place and to realize that no one else would ever think you were is a strange inversion of the expat experience.

Seriously, the 8 people working the counter can't get through more than one person every 15 minutes?

The only distraction, for my fellow line mates and I, is a television suspended over head.

It is switched to CNN. Robert Reich and some republican governor are each given approximately 2 minutes to explain whether Obama or Mitt will have an easier time "connecting" to working class people. Stewart and Colbert have made entire careers satirizing the inanity of these types of exchanges. Still when you haven't been exposed to it for awhile the stupidity of the whole charade does take you back a bit.

A middle aged women is audibly perturbed by the points made by the republican governor. I find it a bit surprising that anyone these days holds daytime cable news in high enough esteem to even be worthy of contempt.

When describing life in Tokyo, I often tell people that many things at first seem crazy, confusing, and arbitrary but then you figure out the reason behind them, the way to do them, it becomes very easy. You learn that if the train pulls into the station on the left side of the platform it will go into one side of Shinjuku station if it pulls on to the right side of the platform it will go to another side of Shinjuku station. And you find out that even if you screw up that there is a staircase tucked away on the back side of platform three that allows you to bypass most of the station to get to the other side.

This being my first time in Los Angeles I quickly realize there are corollaries in the US.

For example

Do not try and drive on the 405 expressway anytime between 4pm-9pm, you will go nowhere.

If radio station ads are any indication there are no "used" cars for sale in Los Angeles.

However, there are a plethora of establishments willing to sell you a certified "pre-owned" cars.

pre-owned

Wouldn't the standard pre/post usage rules mean if anything the term should be "post-owned?"

To live in Tokyo is to be constantly bombarded by advertisements, on the train, in stores, giant screens on buildings. But it all kind of blurs together into an unintelligible buzz.

I stop at a CVS to pick up a toothbrush and toothpaste (Tom's Maines!!!!). Walking in I seem to subconsciously walk directly to the toothbrush isle without even thinking about it. It feels much more natural to buy things here.

Yay! they have Snapple

A day later, I'm at my friend Sarah's apartment we're watching Community over dinner.

"You know it's weird that it's not at all weird that you're here just hanging out, like it's usual"

I laugh, "I know right!"

I'm grateful that that doesn't change