And what am I doing? Hiding in my hotel room. Things have changed in 15 years (my hotel room, for example, has a desk in it and isn’t just the size of my bed) but I remember things don’t open until 10 or later. In any case, I’m not brave enough to get on the train during rush hour with all my luggage. I have my laptop bag, a carry-on-sized-bag for my clothes, and a carry-on-sized-bag for all the presents I brought. As any good Buddhahead knows (and my Korean friends as well) you have to bring a lot of gifts for all your friends and family. Maybe that’s why I shouldn’t have that many friends. I suppose, I don’t, really.

The bathroom of my hotel room is still the weird one-piece-molded-plastic thing, but the toilet has the bidet feature. I’m afraid of most of the water in Japan, so I’m not trying it.

After fifteen years, I finally made it back to Japan. But it took fifteen-and-a-half hours of sitting and my ass always hurts after I fall asleep sitting up. I’ve only been asleep for three or four 10 minute stretches, once on the plane and the rest on the bullet train. It wasn’t all that easy to find the hotel, either. The map was cartoonish and the roads were small and not well marked. Just like the Japan I’m used to.

It’s now 6:30AM US time and I left the house at 11AM yesterday. I better get some sleep while I can.