Tokyo and Sayonara

We were pretty well travelled out by the time we got off the train in Shinjuku, a borough of Tokyo. The outer edges of a typhoon kept a steady rain going as we, yet again struggled to find the hotel, the bizarrely-named, art-deco decorated "City Hotel NUTS." I hadn't eaten breakfast and it was lunch time, so after we stowed our bags, we went to find the Japanese Mexican restaurant I'd seen on the walk to th hotel. On the way we took a moment ot admire the gloriously misnamed "Me Room: Home Cocking" restaurant. At the Mexican restaurant, Jana got either a beef or chicken taco and nachos. I settled on the chorizo taco and burrito. My idea of chorizo, honed by my Mexican travels, is a diced, spicy sausage; the Japaneses' is a warm vienna sausage. Japan is so strange.

After we went back and checked in, Jana and I Ieft mom to write emails to her beau as we explored the area. We quickly found an English pub where they had fantastic specials on happy hour cocktails and also $12 pints of Guinness. After a couple of drinks, thoroughly worn out, we headed back to the hotel relatively early. The next day was still rainy so we made no effort to cram in sight-seeing. We manished to find a Turkish restaurant and then made our way to the airport. Without much ado, I got them to the departure gate. We sa our sayonaras and off the went to traverse the planet as I made my way towards Yokohoma.

Random Observations:

-Kamikochi has a troop of wild monkeys. our first night, late in the afternoon, they descended from the mountains and wandered nonchalantly through the better dressed primates who followed them and took pictures. Mom, Jana and I traipsed along with them for several hundred yards. I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've seen monkeys in the wild.

-Once, while writing in the comfort of an inn's tea room, I left my computer on a table as I left the roomm to fetch something or other. When I returned, my fellow Japanese guests had grouped around my laptop and were gawking at the desktop picture, a sunset in Afghanistan. One even pulled out his camera and took a picture. Something about that struck me as quintessentially Japanese tourist.

-If you don't like seafood for breakfast, dn't go to Japan. If you don't like seafood, period, definitely don't go to Japan. They even have seafood calzones.

-It took over a week, but I was finally subjected to a traditional Japanese squat toilet, a glorified trench/hole. Uh-uh. I searched until I found a western one. The dichotomy between the two, just like every other one between traditional and modern in this country, is jarring. On one end is the trench/hole and on the other is a futuristic toilet. Every western toilet we've come across has a heated seat, and many had "remote controls", panels against the wall next to the toilet with buttons to flush, raise or lower the lid(s), activate the built-in bidet, and, possibly, teleport to the 30th century. To me, I can sum up this country thusly: Japan...$2000 toilet; 20 cent roll of toilet paper.