Tachikawa Grand Hotel

... our bearings, we finally found Shinjuku Prince Hotel. Couldn't wait to put down our luggage and lay on a real bed. We entered our room. But the lights won't turn on! It took us a while to figure out that we needed to stick our key card into a slot near the door in order to activate the electricity in the room. You Japanese people are so energy efficient! We started surveying the room. Before the ...

... to fill the appetite of the wanting.

We browsed through the streets and alleys while observing the fashions of the young and trendy. Shops, shops and more shops everywhere and anything that you can think of is readily available.

There are also some areas which provide a different palette of entertainment. These areas include Kabuki-cho in the Shinjuku and Dogenzaka in the Shibuya. I’ll leave the reader to figure out these areas for himself.

... comes without buttons. I pushed all the buttons the first day and nothing at all happened. I then told a guy from the lab and he tried to figure it out and couldn't. Then yesterday I found the secret compartment on the toilet that housed even more buttons, and one very important button that makes the other buttons work. Then the fun began. Japanese toilets seem to come in either the very basic squat toilet or the super fancy video game toilet. Luckily I ...

... and helpful. Someone interested in buying the van was planning to see it, hopefully after it´s all fixed up again. It was a relief to leave all the van worries behind, although I´m not the type to leave worries behind. Hopefully I can learn how to do that on this journey. Looking back on our trip across Canada, the van carried us over 16,000 kilometers in relative comfort, safety,and VW style. Our first full day in Japan ...

... order to say a prayer, the patrons throw money into a large container that faces a candle-lit alter, clap their hands, and sit there for maybe 30 seconds.. then walk away. People stand in line to do this and it is always very crowded. I couldn't get a great photo of this because it was too dim and it was also backlit by daylight. This is guarded by a single person; and I didn't see anyone that looked anything like clergy or any other ...

... that brought me to Nippori. Little did I notice that the shape of the train was, in fact, block-ish, instead of wedge-ish, and was a train that apparently terminated at Narita - before the airport. Now, normally this wouldn't be too much of a problem for me, but the morning left me in a state of overload, and my nerves were buzzing perhaps a little too much. I started to freak out that "this train isn ...

... this flight was much better. The skies were smooth, and I spent hours talking to the young lady seated next to me who was travelling to Japan to take part in a one month Japanese language clinic. I arrived in Japan at the scheduled time, 2 days later than I intended to. American Airlines once again lived up to my low expectations by putting my luggage onto flight 61 instead of flight 175. The agent said flight 61 was delayed (of course) but if I cared to wait ...

... a selection of three sashimis. We were excited when they speared Chrisˇ¦s filet of fish on some kind of metal spear and stuck it into some sand surrounding the pile of wood so it cooked in a kind of indirect way. They soon brought out our complementary green Japanese tea. Chris doesnˇ¦t usually like tea but tried it and loved it, he is sick and it cleared his sinuses. They then brought us our appetizer: some little fried whole fished with the heads still ...

... too....he said you're not safe anywhere so they're just going to stay in their own house. We've been bombarded with free stuff from cell phone companies, internet service providers, travel agencies, newspaper and magazine people - all of course wanting you to sign up to use their services. Right now there are mini seminars being held in different smaller rooms around the hotel on things like: Travel as a JET, Getting the most for your YEN, Cooking in Japan ...

... many bridges that have been built to cross the water. Each bridge is unique and the designs are very different. I was distracted by the bridges though when I started to see dozens of blue houses (little boxes made by those tarpolen things and wood). It turns out that these "houses" were built by the many homeless and this is where they live. Yet another example of how Japan has still not recovered from the '87 crash. The row of "houses ...