Money money money money money money (money!)

I'll let you all in on a little secret: I wasn't always poor.

Oh yes, I remember it fondly.  There was a time where my cup runneth over with skrilla.  A time when, with the flair of my debit card, the world opened before me, my tacit oyster.  With each paycheck came the promise of weeks and months of childhood ambitions not unfulfilled--but simply waiting, hungry for that Pavlovian jingle of a pocketful of newly-minted 500 yen coins.  That moment when the opportunity would finally arise when I could proudly retort "actually Mom, you can spend the entire weekend at the arcade playing Time Crisis," or, "actually, spending $150 on a hot sauce collection is the opposite of that thing you said," or "I'm trying but the coins keep slipping out of the G-string!"

Not scrapping and surviving.  Good times.

Being a manchild in his 20s, I thought that the world insisted discipline and restraint only from those who, you know, actually had some to give.  But, like nice ladies at soapland, life often conspires to milk you dry, even if you've got nothing left to give.

I've mentioned before that Mrs. Merican and I are currently in the process of filling out the necessary paperwork, jumping through the necessary hoops, and reaching the necessary arounds to receive her United States permanent resident visa.  What I may not have mentioned is that this exercise in bureaucracy comes at the convergence of the most expensive anythings either of us have ever done in our lives.

In the past six months, one or both of us have: bought engagement rings, moved across the country, shipped a new computer to the United States (and promptly had it lost, and are now currently waging war against our countries' respective postal services to get the insurance money), bought wedding rings, been unemployed (one of us, twice!), had surgery (one of us, twice!), purchased a ticket to the United States, paid for an initial visa interview, paid for a background check from a foreign country, paid for an extensive medical checkup and vaccination regimen required for the visa application, and in another three weeks, we'll be heading up to Tokyo to pay another few hundred dollars for a second visa interview.  Oh, and we'll also be paying our annual income tax.

It's almost like they don't want foreigners moving to the US.

Twice this year, I have gone to the bank to withdraw funds down to the last dollar.  It's dangerous and exciting, like pooping with the lights off.

It also stinks.

I'm a financial Rocky to the world's Ivan Drago.  Each time beating the count just to find myself flat on my back again.

There's a metaphor for Capitalism to be found in there somewhere, but for the life of me I can't reach it.

Crunching a few quick numbers, it looks like we're going to be able to make it through all this and back to the States just in time for the wedding, so long as we don't have to pay an overweight baggage fee.  This should be no problem, however, since our pockets will be completely empty.

I'd be lying if I said this wasn't causing some amount of tension in the relationship.  After all, it's a lot easier to appreciate each others' company when spending twice as much on train fare isn't a significant blow to your budget.But, in spite of all the bran damaeg I've no doubt incurred at the receiving end of the Perestroikan pugilist's meaty mitt, I honestly rate this time as some of the best we've ever spent together and indeed, some of the best time I've ever spent in Japan.

Really.

Japan is a weekender's paradise, and it honestly demands very little of a sightseer's budget.  Sure, you could do one of those fancy bus tours, getting ferried to and fro as the chirpy lady at the front of the bus says "arigatou gozaimashita" for the four-hundred-thirty-fifth time in between telling you all about the history of the particular type of asphalt the bus is driving on.  Or, you could pack a lunch in a dainty basket, toss a dart at a map of the rail system, and roll.

Dainty.

There is so much to see and do in Japan.  So much going on that if you spend all your time and money trying to buy yourself a good time in this country, you'll miss all the best parts.  Hardly seems sincere coming from a guy who met his wife at Universal Studios Japan, but for every weekend spent forming a heart with our hands for the picture at the end of the Indiana Jones Adventure ride at Tokyo DisneySea, dozens more are spent perched atop a boulder in Hirakata's city park enjoying a picnic, or strolling, fingers intertwined, through the bustling side-streets of Shinsaibashi, or some other romantic shit that I'm good at.

You can't see it but she's actually crying in this picture

Opportunities to find the best of Japan for the price of a train ticket are never more than an accident away.  And unlike how it was your for parents, it one won't haunt them for eighteen years.  One of my first memories of a truly good time in Japan was spent with my old co-worker in Kyoto at the mercy of a bus schedule and his better-than-mine-I-guess-I'll-trust-it Japanese.  On a pocketful of change, we drank in the sights and sounds of a city locked in time.  Monuments of a bygone era standing out like pushpins on a map.  But for all of Kyoto's raw, uncompromising historic beauty, there was one place, one moment not on any tourist map that I remember more vividly than anything else that day.

There, between the muddled scamper from bus stop to bus stop, lost in a web of quiet, meandering paths, we shuffled past an old man sweeping leaves with an old, traditional straw broom and into a humble cemetery.  And along the cobblestone and gravel among the headstones and memorial planks, puzzled by the shooters of cheap convenience store liquor dotting the burial plots, we walked.  A place so ordinary and unassuming to everyone except the two very white guys having a very white-guy-in-a-foreign-country moment.  Without a brochure or tour bus in sight, we found the real Japan.

It didn't cost a cent.