Tokyo Auto Show, Here I Come!

...or not. Seriously, yesterday we spent six, count 'em, SIX hours on the trains trying to get to the auto show, which should have been maybe a 40 minute ride. Robert is a great guy but he is not very good on the trains and won't talk to anyone. Of course, I could have, but, err, I don't speak Japanese. Anyway, we ended up in BFJ and had a cheap lunch. I was able to find a cool toy for Chris and they wrapped it up for me. Then back on the rails trying to get to the car show. We gave up, headed home, and had some very reasonably priced good Italian food right across the street from his apartment. His kids are quite adventurous, having octopous ceviche, fried calamari, spaghetti carbonara, etc. I am still sick. I feel I am on the edge of getting better or worse, and will try to relax today. I wanted to go out and experience from nutty Japanese nightlife, but I don't think it will happen this trip given my cold. Who knows, maybe there will be a fun place in Kyoto!

The Little Farmers and Transport Woes!

Today started out great. I went with my friends 3 year old on a school field trip to a sweet potato patch where they kids got to dig up potatoes. That was a lot of fun. It's been a while since I sat on a school bus.


After the field trip, I went back to change and was going to meet Robert at the Park Hyatt's "New York Grill", famous from the movie "Lost in Translation." I got in a cab at Robert's apartment, about 10 minutes away from where I was going to meet him, and his wife gave the taxi driver the instructions. I had a bad feeling about that guy and it turned out to be true. For starters, his cab smelled like a stupid person. I know that doesn't make sense, but, ah, well, trust me. So this guy is driving round and round in circles (through the busiest part of Tokyo), went the wrong way down a one way street, stopped a ton of times to look at his map, stopped in the middle of the road to think, etc. After 50 minutes I told him to stop, that I was getting out to walk. He pulled over and let me out and that was that. I got in a new cab and he took me to the meeting point (another famous hotel, the Okura) in about five minutes.

Now, dinner at the New York Grill was awesome! Thankfully, I am a big client for Robert's company so they picked up the tab on his expense account. Well, I mean, I *could* be a big client, you know, if, errr, I were big and I were a client. Hmm... call it 'client development' then. Anyway, the steak was fantastic, and I had the requisite Suntory. And, yes, it made for a 'relaxing time.'

Later that night we went CD shopping and ended up getting a famous "MOSburger", a Japanese hamburger that is supposed to be the best anywhere. It was a meatloaf sandwich on a hamburger bun. Not bad at all, but not a hamburger. Nope, no way.

Respect my Discount Electronics!

Nice day, although the jet lag is killing me! We started off witha trip to the a japanese garden. Very serene, with Koi and black oak trees. We saw a wedding couple getting photographed and I snuck off a snapshot. They were in what looked like traditional dress and were quite the dashing newlyweds. After that, Robert and I walked to Akihabara, the discount electronics district of Tokyo. While roaming around the streets and alleyways we saw a couple of interesting things. First was a videogame promotion that had models dressed up like characters from the game. Camoflague short-shorts? Uploading pictures soon! Then, when I was standing on the street looking at a display of USB hubs, something really strange happened. A guy comes up to me with a paperback book folded open. He is pointing to a picture and saying something. At first I worry that it is Japanese, but it doesn't SOUND like Japanese. Finally, I look carefully at the picture and do my best to process his demented warblings. He is pointing to a picture of Eric Cartman and saying "respect my authority!" Heh, okayyyyyy. So I say "South Park!", hoping that would end the enounter. Fat chance. He proceeded to go through all the south park characters, pointing to them in the book, and doing a very loud impression of them and then looking at me for approval. They were all there: Mr Hanky included. Robert picked up a new notebook computer for his wife, and we took off.

T-Minus Zero / Departure Day

Airport lounges are great. United now has two - a "red carpet" lounge for business class, top frequent fliers, and passengers booked on a partner airline. The also have a "First Class." That's America for you. The middle class has dwindled to the point that the upper class misses them! So them lop off the bottom of their own class and give them their own "separate but not quite equal" lounge. It's fine! One of the things I enjoy doing is seeing people who drink alcohol at 8am just because it is free. We're not talking mimosas or bloody marys, but full steam ahead scotchontherocks. There's something about "free" that makes people completely lose their dignity and devalue their time. I have seen people wait for hours in line to get something free worth a couple of bucks.

I am still fighting a cold, and the cold is digging in. I am coming at it with hydration, zinc and rest, and it is counterpunching with tenacious viral replication. My sushi enjoyment will be low if I can't taste or smell when I am in Japan. My first dinner I am lined up to have some grilled kobe beef. Ahhh! That will have some restorative qualities I am sure.

Now, on to a couple of tech things. I am laden with electronics for this trip. 20GB MP3 player, digital camera, notebook (old one), external Li-Ion battery (5 hours of power!), Mini DV video camera, Handspring PDA (which can also be charged by the external battery), handheld GPS, Cell Phone (trying to get a prepaid SIM for SMS in Japan), USB 802.11b/g wireless dongle, and a mini optical mouse. This last item, the mouse, is a godsend. You see, for years I have typed on this notebook and inadvertantly brushed the trackpad with my thumb, ruining anything I had been typing. I turned off that pesk pad in the BIOS and switched to this mini-mouse. It's perfect and I can bang away the keyboard and not worry about the cursor flying around and inserting itself in the middle of the last paragraph while I am typing.

What all this means, hopefully, is that I will be able to connect to the Internet and upload pictures to this blog. That's a big improvement over the euroblog I wrote in 2001 which was long on descriptive text and short on pictures.

So here I sit in the middle-class lounge. Most everyone here is Japanese. They are all dressed casually. Even here in America, they bow to each other. I don't even talk to my neighbors, much less prostrate myself in front of them.

Wait, so you probably want to know what the heck I am doing going to Japan anyway, right? OK. I am going to visit my friends, the Sasakis. Robert Sasaki and I have been close friends since Berkeley High School. He is married to a lively and gracious woman named Momoe, and they have two daughters. I will stay with them at their place in Tokyo's Nishi-Azabu. We will all take a couple of days to go to Kyoto. I've always wanted to go there and it will be great to visit with them. We will be staying at a modern Ryokan (Spa) and I am looking forward to the not-quite-scalding soaking tub to give me some relief from my cold.

Chris, my friend Cliff's son, asked me to take "ten hundred pictures," and so I shall. After Japan I am going to spend some more time in Asia. One or two more weeks. I am not sure of the itinerary yet, but will post as I make my decisions. I just want to eat and relax. Is that so wrong?

The way jetlag works, I am going to try and sleep for a couple of hours at the start of the flight. If I can get three hours of sleep, that will have me waking up at 9am Tokyo time. Perfect. Either way, I need to stay up once I arrive until proper bed time, then just zonk out. I think that should be OK. One time I got there and could not go to sleep so I went out to a rank bar called "Charleston". It's best days, if it had any, were well behind it at the time. I met a half-Indian woman from London sitting next to me and we had a lovely conversation until I fell asleep . Not a recommended pick-up tactic, fellas. Tonight I will have a nice steak dinner, unpack, chat with Robert for a while, and * hopefully* get a nice deep sleep. I wish I brushed up on my basic Japanese phrases before I headed out. Except for "One more beer please" and "where is the toilet", my Nihongo is lost. Actually, if you know phrase 1, you better learn phrase 2, so in that sense I am OK. Well, I am going to pack up and head out of the lounge to the gate. Of course, more will follow.

Two Hours Into the Flight

The ANA 777 does not have an electrical hookup in middle class, so it's a good thing that I brought my external battery. A flight attendant graciously offered me an external battery they keep on board, but I've got a fat five hours with the one that I brought, so, I passed. I am full of airline kaiseki and cold medicine. Two hours into the flight I am finally relaxed. It's been seven years since I've been in Japan. I've heard that the human body regenerates most of itself in seven years, so in a way this will be a new experience for me, or at least for the majority of my cells. Lunch was a tasting menu of prawn with caviar, sake flavored scallop, anago in jelly, braised duck breast, tamago sushi, honeyed apricot, sake-steamed flounder, whelk with seaweed, somen noodles with wasabi and nori, grilled tilefish, mountain vegetable and tofu crepe, with a miso soup, sake, and dessert (mango cake). Finished it all off with a chocolate truffle. I sure hope my cold gets under control so that I can better taste the food in Tokyo.

Well, like I said, I am finally feeling relaxed. Getting off the ground and thinking about having an adventure or two or three is finally winning over the guilt of leaving Gabe to work alone, the lonliness of leaving my friends (old and new), and the general unsettled idea that I am sure that I have left something essential behind.