I AM ACTUALLY IN TOKYO, JAPAN.

Hey all,

arrived yesterday, 3 pm. I'm completely exhausted. Here's what happened:

First, a 13 hour flight, Sandwiched between a fat, friendly guy from Queens and a grumpy old man. Not so comfy, glad when it was over. Narita Airport (Tokyo) was immediately intimidating, but customs was extremely efficient (actually, Customs proved to be the first of many impressively efficient things I've seen over the past three days.) Found my pickup at a designated "meeting point," and we picked up two more guys before leaving. I've basically spent the past two days with Jon (Denver) and Brandon (NYC & Babson).

Took an increasingly crowded hour & half train ride from Narita to the hotel with our Interac contact, a young Iranian woman who grew up here (three impressive things on Tokyo trains & subways: 1. You can eat off the floor 2. or the plush seat cushions 3. but not in the cell-phone free section of the car)

Essentially what happened next was a night on the town. We got some food (adammantly ordering in Japanese, regardless of our waitress' responses in English), wandered around a lot (it's totally safe here; saw a twelve year old girl bicycling down an alley at 1 am in the morning), and got more food and Asahi beer at a Yakitori joint (food on a stick; in our case, octopus). Crashed about 2 am after struggling with phone cards, an event which became an epic journey from public phones to embarassingly complex conversations with the guys at the hotel desks.

Oh, this is what it looks like outside of my hotel:

And I took this early today, the view from my hotel window:

Pre-tty wild.

Today was awesome. Did a LOT of wandering. Started out going for breakfast at a japanese fast-food joint (you buy tickets, hand then to the waitress, and get a bowl of rice with stuff on it. Curry & seaweed actually work together). We then hit the subway system, traveling first to this place called asabashi (i think), a gargantuan electronics store that sold anything possibly technological (DVDs, CDs, computer parts, electric pianos, cell phones, books). 7 floors. lots of lights and blinking.

Then on to the imperial palace in downtown Tokyo (Chiyoda-ku), which meant a long ride on those clean-ass subways. Beautiful, but unfortuneately I forgot my camera. Brandon took a lot of pics for us, I'll post them later. Then more wandering: Roppingi shopping area, wandering around looking for lunch, finally stopping at a 7-11 for directions (which we promptly misunderstood).

Yes. A 7-11. They also have Denny's.

Finally, found some dinner and hit the trains again, sumimasen!-ing our way through the crowded rush-hours subways, this time bound for Shibuya shopping district, where we found what we figured Tokyo would look like.

LIGHTS. TALL THINGS. LOTS OF PEOPLE.

We returned here, and we're are ready to cras. It's 8:15, and I don't know how much longer i can stay up.

A few Tokyo observations:

1. Walk on the left, drive on the left, stay to the left on escalators, but get the hell out of the way of bicyclists.

2. Always smile. Period.

3. There's almost no graffiti, litter, or smoking on the streets of Tokyo.

4. Want a refreshing bottle of soda? Try the 20 oz of green tea instead.

5. Sumimasen, sumimasen,sumimasen.

6. No Jaywalking. If you're in an alley, there's no cars coming, and the light hasn't changed, there's still no jaywalking.

7. Ambulances use their megaphones to ask you, "please, get out of the crosswalk." We think.

8. Japanese is HARD. Especially if you're fourteen hours out of whack with a few beers in you.

9. Sumimasen, there's no jaywalking.

10. If I can stay up tonight just an hour more, I'll be on Japan time. Word.