Hosting a Tourist

Here I am, at Haneda airport terminal. It's 11:30PM and the last trains are about to cease, but I'm here hoping to intercept a certain someone.
 Flocks of business men and women come out from the baggage-pick-up door, droves of them, and it's slowly occurring to me that I don't even know which flight my contact is coming from, but I'm hoping it's not the 11:35 one, 'cause that one got delayed to 1.
 That's when my Indonesian penpal, Canti comes out. I recognize her right away, cause she has blue hair. Also, her hat is a monkey. Also, Canti is a witch. Go figure.

I met Canti on the internet over her putting up a request to find someone to go to a haunted forest with. She was to come to Japan for 10 days for her 22nd birthday, with her "Couch-Surfing" host, and we were to do just that. Though my schedule and her's conflicted and it no longer seems like we'll get to do that, other developments have arisen, and it turns out her host hasn't been too reliable at all.
 So I've been hosting Canti at my place for the last two days.
 And that's been fun.


Exploring the city with Canti re-awakened in me the amazement I had when seeing everything for the first time, too. It was lots of fun getting her perspective as a first-timer, too -- especially considering Canti's background. I call her "witch" (she half-jokingly calls herself that too) but Canti is actually seriously a practitioner of Wicca, complete with a witchcraft altar and all that. She's by an enormous long-shot a lot more sensitive to all things spiritual than I am and has only a limited time to buy gifts for her friends, seeing as she's leaving the country October 1st.

Today had us going through some of the places that not too long ago had me quite giddy, such as the market streets of Ameyayokocho, Ueno Park, Asakusa, and the Ikebukuro cat cafes.

Also she loves cats.

 "Whoa," she said as we approached a temple in Ueno Park, "the energy here is totally different. We just walked through a barrier." Though I don't think her spirituality is what defines her, Canti definitely has some times when she's aware of this kind of thing. I may be atheistic, but I do have a lot of respect for that.

Today ended with Canti leaving for Kyoto in the middle of a raging rainstorm the likes of which I haven't seen since the last tropical typhoon, but she'll be back in Tokyo in two days, after which I'm sure there'll be lots more to show her.