Of Japan and Little Sleep...

It's about 10:30pm local time. About 6:30 PST, and I still haven't slept. So if this doesn't make a lot of sense, please forgive me.

I've switched here to blogger, instead of Twitter, since I can't update Twitter from here in Tokyo. It might be useful some other time, but for now, full blog posts are the way to go I think.

We left from LAX about 30m late, due to congestion on the Tokyo area, but landed a little ahead of schedule. The flight was long and full of aches. I watched The Golden Compass, which was pretty good, but had a poor ending. Also watched some of Jumper (good concept, poor direction) and some of that recent Tom Hanks movie with him as a politician battling to fund the Afgans against the communists. The latter seemed pretty good, but I missed the beginning and we landed before it ended. Hopefully I'll catch it on the way back.

I also read some of my H.P. Lovecraft book. It's brilliant. The tone and setting, and some of the verbiage are a bit archaic, but the stories are absolutely modern.

I also slept a little bit.

The guy next to me spent half the flight working on the Sudoku puzzle in the airline's magazine. I don't think he ever finished.

We arrived a little early, bought "green car" train tickets from the Tokyo Airport to the Shinagawa station, which is right near our hotel. We killed about 30m waiting for the train to arrive and get set up. We checked out a little 7-11 type shop, I think it was called Kiosk, and bought a beer and some snacks, though I wasn't really hungry. As we were waiting, the train pulled up, and we watched as all the seats inside rotated around to face the opposite direction. It was like some kind of bizarre mechanical dance going on inside this lit fishbowl of a train car. So, when a train arrives, instead of it having to loop around to face the returning direction, just the chairs rotate. Pretty neat idea.

The train ride was beautiful. The sun was setting and about half of the hour long train ride was through bamboo and deciduous forest, interspersed with picturesque rice paddies. It could not have been more beautiful. Eventually, the forest of green gave way to a forest of houses and buildings and industry, and we arrived at the station.

We found our way out of the station, and after a little exploring, found our hotel and checked in without issue. We showered and changed and went and grabbed some dinner at a local italian restaurant. Food was good, but later gave me some "tummy issues".

My traveling companion, Melody, was tired and went to bed. But I'm not about to lose a single minute while I'm here. She had already said that she wasn't interesting in visiting Akihabara (Electric Town), so I headed down to the subway station myself. After a bit of wandering I found a map on the wall and bought my ticket for 160 yen. After some more wandering, and a review of the map, I found the right train, going the right direction and embarked. 18 minutes later I was there.

I wandered up and down the brightly lit street and explored several different arcades, comic and video game shops. Each one was at least 5 stories tall, with each floor specializing in some specific aspect. 1st floor was typically a series of large claw style games where you could play to win a stuffed animal or some other prize. As the floors got higher, there seemed to be less and less people. I bought a couple of souvenirs for other people and, since it was getting late, I headed back.

Subway trip back to the Hotel was quick and without adventure. I think I'm getting the hang of this.

Called Jenn and caught her on the way out the door. Told her I was alive and well, and wished her a good day. Now, finally, I need to sleep.

Will update when I can.