I really miss London.

It doesn’t get much more relaxing than this.

Still a favorite from my Colorado trip.

On Saturday morning we sat on the floor watching, but not understanding, the TV news reports on typhoon number 17 that was buzzing South-West Japan. The reporters spoke in solemn tones, cutting back and forth between satellite maps and flooded roadways.

We stayed indoors as long as we could but experience told us that if we didn’t get out of the house, we would spend the rest of the day wallowing in our culture shock , wanting to go home. A day without purpose leads to dark thoughts so instead, we opened our English train maps and choose to visit Atami, an old tourist town up the tracks from us.

The weather turned out to not be so bad after all so we had fun wandering the city in the storm, looking through all the shops.

Atami is very different than our more rural “home” in Ninomiya. It’s literally built on the mountains along the Southern edge of Japan so the views from the streets are always winding and obscured. Seaside hotel towers jut out from every possible foothold to create a second layer along each ridge. The typhoon contributed to the surreal images by blending it’s grey clouds into the buildings making the manmade structures seem intrusive on the black land. Narrow alleyways offered secret views of small back openings to homes, restaurants, and businesses while larger breaks gave entry to other unseen parts of the town by way of old moss-covered staircases turning up and away at severe angles. Entirely new sections of road would appear around a corner and buildings seemed to be pushing over each other to get your attention. Sometimes, an ancient temple could be seen on another high peak, shrouded in mist and far away. It was a town that could only be viewed in vertical fragments and the never ending storm made it all the more beautiful.

I’ve always been a night owl. From as far back as I can remember, mornings have been something to endure before my real day starts. My parents and a long string of other type-a personalities have put consistent effort into changing me to no avail. It seems to be part of how I’m made and no amount of habit changing has been able to reverse my late-leaning circadian rhythm.

From getting terrible grades and dropping out of my college classes that started before 9 AM to working the early shift at Starbuck’s, where we tossed back espresso shots like junkies, mornings always remained a struggle. Even when I moved to Japan and the timezone was flipped by 12 hours, my body quickly sussed out day from night and made me pay for it with every 5:30 AM wakeup. I resigned myself to the life of the permanently tired night owl trapped in the working world dominated by morning people.

Then, near the end of 2008, everything changed. My daughter was born and with her arrival, my relationship with the morning was reset.

As any parent will attest, a new baby = no sleep. Especially if they are your first. They break you and brainwash you and there is nothing you can do about it. Very little memory remains of what my life was like before my daughter and I’m oddly OK with that.

The interesting side effect of my daughter’s mind control was how quickly she was able to accomplish what no job or /more-productive-than-thou/ shaming ever had. I was still a night owl but I no longer cared about how early it was because I was just so thrilled to see her happy. She would cry, I would plod my way over to her, she would smile and all was right with this wonderful new world.

The other day, she turned five. She woke up early but I can tell that she’s probably going to be a night owl like me. We stumble out to the kitchen. I grab the pancake mix and click on a burner. She folds her arms against the morning chill. Neither of us talks or opens our eyes much but we are happy for the time together, no matter how early that happens to be.