Thermal Eye on America

As I sit here waiting for the steam to dissipate so I can finish my shaving touch-up, I miss my heated bathroom mirrors.

Good sightseeing day yesterday, will write about it (and everything else I haven’t written about) later, probably on my flight to Sydney.  Checking out of the hotel soon, though, so wanted to get one quick one in.  I leave Japan tonight on the red eye to Sydney, getting in sometime in the morning, at which point I’ll get a flight to Melbourne, where I’ll be until Wednesday morning.  I’m starting to get pretty sick of going from place to place, but am looking forward to getting to Australia for the first time.  I still need to figure out what touristy things I’m going to do once I finish work.  Please send suggestions.

Sightseeing day today, off to visit some temples, and see the third largest Buddha statue in Japan.  It looks like uploads are working at this hotel, so I should have some pictures up before I leave for Australia tomorrow.

Dave, Jay, and Rich:  For dinner last night, I had CoCo Curry, 400g rice, spice 3, with tonkatsu.Neener neener neener. (Dave, can you please forward this link to Jay and Rich, I don’t think I ever sent it to them)For the rest of you: CoCo Curry is the name of a chain in Japan that sells, unsurprisingly*, curry.   It was the first place I ever had Japanese curry, and one of the first places I ever ate in Japan (I think we went there on my second night in the country or so).  There was also one in walking distance from my apartment, so it was a pretty common offering for me.  For ordering, they have a baseline price, which then gets altered with the volume of rice, the spice level, and the extras chosen.  *Yes, I do of course mean that they sell it in an unsurprising manner.  I will go on record here as saying they’ve never once snuck up behind me an gone “boo” while shoving a plate of curry I never ordered at me. 

Fine, whatever.  For the next few days, I will be at:35 degrees 16′53.24″ N  139 degrees  40′00.79 No missiles, please.  (Booger, I’m looking in your direction) 

So, I’ve now left Okinawa and travelled back to Tokyo, only this time getting in to the city, not just in the airport area, and I finally actually feel like I’m in Japan.  Remember earlier, when I mentioned the excitement I’d felt on the train from the airport as soon as I’d arrived?  Well, I was on the same train, and I had that “hay, I’m in Japan!” feel once more.  I think I know what the difference was, too: rice fields.  In Okinawa, I didn’t see any rice fields (nor was I on any trains, which I also associate with Japan).  last night, though, something about seeing rice fields from a train that instantly snapped me back to that Japan state of mind.

For those of you who have the tools to get some meaning out of this (for the rest of you, try earth.google.com), I’m at: 26º 18′ 54.79″ N, 127º 48′ 39.40″ 

Well, food at least.  Sorry I haven’t posted in a couple days, two days ago was an exploration day, and yesterday was the recuperation day.  I’m working on a boring, long-winded post about all of that, but I’ll finish that later.  Right now, it occurs to me that I haven’t really spoken about food at all on this trip.  Mostly this is due to the fact that at the time of my last posting, I hadn’t really eaten much on this trip (airplane food not being all that worth writing about).  Fortunately, I’ve since had a chance to fix that somewhat.
First off, at the Hilton near the airport, they had something that I can’t believe I’ve never seen before.  In many ways, it is the ultimate breakfast option - bacon loaf.  It was a multi-headed baguette (perfect for breaking off individual rolls), with a hollow channel down the middle that had strips of bacon (very thinly sliced, and perfectly cooked, with just enough of the fat left behind to keep it supple, but still easy to break off the portion for the corresponding bit of bread)  (photos for all of these will come later, but at my current hotel ftp doesn’t seem to be getting through).  The bread itself was perfect, too, with a good crunchy crust and a light, airy yet somewhat chewy interior.
For lunch I had sushi at the place in the airport.  Nothing to write home about (I don’t technically consider this writing home), but not bad for sushi in an airport (please don’t freak) (sorry, anytime I encounter the phrasing â��two-syllable noun â�� participle  â�� ‘the’ â�� two-syllable nounâ��, I hear it being sung by the English Beat).  After lunch, though, I had a lot of time to kill, and that’s when I found a few of the favorites I had been searching for since my last trip.  The first of these (and I do wish I could upload the photos) were the â��fried butterâ�� potato chips.  In the full spectrum of snack options, I consider these pure genius, on the â��fuck it, I give upâ�� level.  Just the image of the product design meeting where people are sitting around a table brainstorming about what options are left for the potato chip, and the knowledge that â��coat them in butterâ�� no doubt beat out â��fry them in bacon greaseâ��after three tied votes (and a bit of backroom negotiation).  As far as I can tell, the only thing left is to take the butter-flavored potato chips and dip them in mayonnaise.
More meals and snacks described tomorrow.  As a preview though, I offer: takoyaki, tiki bars, and pigs’ ears with peanut.

Figured if I posted at least that much it would make me feel good about posting just about anything next, no matter how weak an entry.Sometimes that’s what you need.But that’s just for me.  For you, here’s Iron Maiden’s “Die With Your Boots On”.  It’s been stuck in my head for the past week, so by hearing it, it’s almost like you’re momentarily becoming me.     

(Ok, it’s not really that much like you’re me, but trust me, it’s as close as you’d want to get) 

Bad News: Specifically, The Terminal
Ok, so first off, air fares are a strange thing.  For some reason, flights with multiple one-way destinations (a giant loop, in other words) can cost significantly more than mulitple round trip flights with the same end points.  This makes very little sense to me, since having fewer actual flights involved reduces their costs, yet somehow they not only don’t pass the savings on to you, they charge you extra.  This being the case, my travel plans are a bit roundabout on this trip.  I booked a three-city roundtrip:  L.A. - Tokyo â�� Sydney â�� L.A.   I then booked two separate round trip flights, one between Tokyo and Okinawa, and one between Sydney and Melbourne.  This ended up saving the company a significant amount of money.  I also thought I would get an extra benefit out of it, the chance to look around the city for a bit between my arrival in Tokyo and my flight to Okinawa the next day (my arrival time in Tokyo would have made it difficult (if not impossible) to get to Okinawa that same evening).  So, instead of booking the early, or even mid-day flight to Okinawa, I booked an evening flight (6:30 p.m.).  Unfortunately, it seems I was a bit â��too clever for my own goodâ�� as the saying goes (or â��too far from clever for my own goodâ��, as the saying actually means).  I didn’t take fully in to account that fact that check-out time from the hotel was 11:00 a.m., and that I would be saddled with two large bags (thought not actual saddlebags), so I would have to find something to do with them.  I considered asking to leave them at the hotel for a while (the larger hotels often will do this), but instead decided to go to the airport and check in, then take the train away from the airport to hang out for a while.  
Then I realized it was raining, and that the airport was nowhere near anything interesting.
Still, I had many hours, all I had to do was check in right away and I should be ok.  Looking for the ANA counter, I realized I would have a hell of a time trying to find my way around the airport without my glasses.
Which, I soon discovered, I was without.  As in �left them in my room at the hotel�.
I even knew exactly where they were too.  They were where they had been when I looked at them about 2 hours earlier and said to myself �better be sure not to forget those!�
I called the hotel and confirmed they had found them.  I then figured I would just take the next shuttle back to the hotel and pick them up.
The next shuttle, it turns out was not for another hour.  So I bought a piping hot can of coffee, opened my book and settled in.  About 40 minutes later, the hotel called me and asked when I was coming to get the glasses.  I explained that I was waiting for the next shuttle, and would be on it.  They thanked me and hung up.  5 minutes after that, they called back and said they would send someone out to bring them to me (yay Hilton!).  While they ended up getting to me just a few minutes before the next shuttle, it avoided me having to go back, then most likely wait for the next shuttle after that.   Unfortunately, it also burned up just enough time to make it no longer worth even considering going anywhere (if it was sunny I still may have gone out, but in the rain it wasn’t worth it), so instead I ended up wandering the airport (fortunately, it is a large enough airport that there are many small shops, to distract for at least a while).
Then I finished my lunch, got tired of shopping, and still had several hours left.  So I sat down and read my book some more.
Then I finished that and still had hours to go.
And here I am.
The good news is that my �adjust to the time change RIGHT NOW plan seems to have worked.  According to my computer (which I always leave on L.A. Time), it is currently 1:11 a.m. In Los Angeles, and I am not the least bit sleepy.