Konichiwa

In the land where the trains run at 180mph and arrive on time - to the second (no exaggeration!) - every moment counts. For example, at our current hotel here in Tokyo, somehow our request to extend our initial one night booking to run through Tuesday evening got lost and so we got a call at precisely 11:05 AM - 5 minutes after checkout time - inquiring (profoundly politely, of course) as to why we were still in our room.

So, while these 24hr Internet, DVD, Manga (comix) cafes with free beverages, comfy reclining chairs, huge libraries of books & movies, showers and special $9 overnight rates (subways shut down here at midnight. If you miss the last train, you're faced with the option of a $50 taxi ride or a $50 night in a capsule hotel, so these places have boomed as a refuge for those who can't afford to make it home) are quite something, as we are truly spending 10x more a day here than we had at any other point in the trip, we're really trying to maximize our value here and be out doing something every possible second of the day (no, we are not sleeping very much). Therefore, we're not really devoting much time to updating the blog.

Worry not though, from auto-washing-toilet mishaps (think over the stall fountain) to arduous cross-town visits to hot-spring baths in Japanese traditional garb (wooden geta shoes!), to nervously poking our heads through the doors of myriad tiny bars on the 4th, 5th, and 6th floors of building after building after building to see what was going on (and finding more that we could have ever imagined), to deep forays into the Bermuda Triangle of cross-language communications, we'll eventually give a full update of our hi-jinx here.

And good lord, given the treatment we received just purchasing $25 of incense, I'd suggest that someone with a spare $30k or so come over and buy a new car - just to see what happens...