Coco-Curry-House-Ichibanya

When you’re on a 2.5 week trip, it hardly seems like it’s ever going to end, but it was my last day in Tokyo and it felt pretty surreal. It would be my last chance to tie up all my loose ends, so I headed out to get my final souvenirs and replace that stupid sake cup that I broke. The plan was to go over to the Square Enix store to grab a CD for Min, the Tokyo Seibu Loft to try and replace the sake cup, somewhere to find another bag because my suitcase was now too full to travel, the Tokyo Dome to get Fighters jerseys for Eric, and maybe a CD shop to look for a live Persona music DVD/CD. ...

Jet lag is always a bit difficult to overcome, but when you’ve flown to the other side of the world, the body really doesn’t know what to do with itself. So it came to pass that I wrote the whole second half of Part II of this travelogue at 0600 after a half hour of tossing and turning, despite being on almost no sleep. This third part comes straight from my exhausted fingers to you, starting before the first Giants game and continuing after getting back to the hotel. ...

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“A reenactment of me starting to write this entry in emacs”] [/caption] I begin this entry sitting at the gate for my ANA flight…1 (No joke, my flight number is NH0001), listening to Japanese ska to get into the mood as I await my 1220 flight out of America. As per usual, I got here a good three hours before my flight even was ready to think about starting to take off thanks to something I like to call hyper-punctuality, but I’m sure most would call insanity. In fact, I was so early this morning when I arrived at 0900 that ANA hadn’t even opened up their check-in terminal (don’t worry, I’m sure to repeat this detail later) ...

It won’t be the first time I arrive in the Land of the Rising Sun and it probably won’t be the last, but at least it’s all for fun this time. My last journey into Japan took me to Okinawa, an island paradise where I found myself snorkeling and enjoying the beauty of the landscape whenever I was off the clock, but this time I’ll be diving headfirst into three of the four main islands: Honshū, Kyūshū, and Hokkaidō to get a real glimpse of Japan more separate from the US-heavy Okinawa. ...