A few days spent in Kuala Lumpur

Thursday, December 13, 2007

I'm in Malaysia, sitting in a nice hotel room on a ritzy couch, drinking Cuban rum and American Coke. Katie is off at Hazardous Environments Training with AKE. Her company may send her to a war-zone and the insurance likes to have their people run through this course before they're shot at.

Got to tell you something about Malaysia. It is a super-lingual country. I watched a reality show on local TV yesterday called "One In a Million". It's basically American Idol. All these singer wannabes wail their hearts out to be on TV and win a million… ringgits not dollars. That's around $330,000 U.S. Anyway, it is a Malaysian show, with Malaysian wannabes, Malaysian hosts, Malaysian "guest judges", and a washed- up Anglo pop star playing the role of Mr. Asshole judge. When I tuned-in the "singers" were behind a white sheet so the judges could only see their silloutte and hear the screechings from beyond. I personally do not find the Malaysian language to be very pleasant to the ear. It's an Austronesian language closely related to Indonesian, and it borrows words from Arabic, Tamil, Portuguese, Persian, Dutch, Chinese, and English. 98 percent of the songs on OIM were English pop tunes… the other 2 percent were contemporary country. Almost all of there were sung in English. The washed up pop star commented in English, the other judge spoke in Malay, 8 out of 10 of the contestants spoke English, and the two co-hosts kept up their best Ryan Seacrest impressions. The cute chick co-host rambled on only in English while the cool dude with all the hair-gel co-host stuck to Malay. Meanwhile the sub-titles jumped back and forth between the two languages. Just to spice things up every once in awhile, someone would either speak Chinese or Hindi.

There are three large ethnic groups in Malaysia… Chinese, Indian, and Malay. They all speak English. I have seen ads for "The Starter Wife", a Lifetime original starring Debra Messing, on the back of buses. The hotel we are staying at has a Hard Rock Café attached to it. Don't get me started on the Mall. There is a 4 storey Christmas tree in the middle of this non-Christian city of Kuala Lumpur. The mall, by the way, is HUGE. It's right at the base of the Petronas Towers (the highest towers in the world at 1, 482.9 ft. until the Taipei 101 rose above them in 2004). We can see the Petronas Towers from our hotel. They dominate the skyline the way the Twin Towers did in New York. Why does Malaysia have one of the tallest buildings in the world you ask? I do not know. Petronas is a petroleum company and I guess the country's economy is run on oil money, and there must be a lot of it because there is construction everywhere. The other natural resource is rubber, which apparently grows inside trees. Workers dig into rubber trees and harvest the rubber. Katie tells me there is also a lot of banking done in Malaysia. Very loose banking laws means money comes from all over the world to hide from their respective governments.

Walk down the streets of Kuala Lumpur and you are surrounded by the rattle of buildings on the rise. Traffic hums along in a steady stream of broken mufflers and huge buses. Jungle trees straight out of the Tarzan novels line those roads and hang heavy with green leaves, brown vines, and the never-ending rain. On our first day here, I got out of the shower and opened the window to our 6th floor room. The branches of a small forest of lively green trees danced for my enjoyment. No, actually, once I stopped looking at the whole and concentrated on the singular branch, I realized they are not dancing, their movements are from the ten monkeys jumping from limb to limb. Black spots of movement with long tails aiding their aerial ballet. Freakin' monkeys. I never thought I would see the like. And I actually never saw them again… at least in Kuala Lumpur.


Katie finished her training, having learned about bullets, balms, bugs, and bombs. Ask her about the "dreamy" Australian instructors. I've heard enough.

Back to the story. The intrepid adventurers are off, taking a short flight from KL (what everyone in-the-know calls Kuala Lumpur) to northern Malaysia's island of Langkawi. We got there late and went straight to the hotel. The cabins sit on stilts out across the ocean, brown wood littered with glass and drying bathing suits. Its pretty durn cool. But it's only our home for a night and then we're off to the Andaman resort on the northwestern tip of the island. On the way, we see how poor parts of Malaysia really are, but we also see the incredible mountains, lagoons, and rain forest. And don't forget about the monkeys. Our cabbie points out the window to our right, "You see that island out there? That is Thailand."

"Wow," we say from the back seat.

Then he points to the side of the road saying, "and there are some monkeys."

Katie yells, "Monkeys!" And sure enough, there is a little monkey family walking around on the side of the road. There are 5 or 6 of them just doing their little monkey business. Welcome to Malaysia.

We wind about a narrow cobble-stoned driveway that ends at our 4 star lodging. It's amazing. There is a huge open-air lobby in an oriental safari motif. And we are right in the middle of the jungle. Trees surround us that are more than 4 stories high. They are littered with vines and strange plants. The beach is just 100 yards away.

As we walk to our room, the white-clad attendant warns us, "When you are not in your room, make sure to keep your doors closed." Now that sounds like good sound advice wherever you stay, but this next bit knocked us for a loop. "The monkeys will come in your room and mess with your things." No shit. The monkeys. I never thought I would hear a warning quite like that. I love my life.

KL's Lankawi Adventure

Leeches

Seven or eight black, wiggly, inch-long creatures waved back and forth on my calf, attached to the skin as if growing out of the muscle. They danced back and forth nearly to the perfect beat of one of my favorite dance songs, "When the Rush Comes." Don't ask me why I suddenly put the movement of the creatures to a dance song. You never know how you'll react to the horror of leeches attached to your leg and draining it of blood until it actually happens. I tried to channel the lessons of my prior week of 'Surviving Hostile Regions' training in Malaysia. Who knew I'd have to use them so quickly?

"Whatever you do, don't panic," clipped the Australian voice of my AKE instructor in my class as he showed us pictures of lethal snakes, spiders, scorpions and leeches from Asia and Africa. His name was Mick, a former Special Forces officer in the Australian military and now a military consultant with the agency teaching journalists how to withstand the hostile regions my news network might send me to.

"Take a lighter or salt and let the leech fall off on its own. Do NOT pull it out!" Mick paced before the 12 international journalists with his eyes wide open, his arms held up to emphasize a dramatic pause. This is a guy who knows how to grab attention from an audience.

"Because what happens when you pull it out?"
Visions of blood gushing everywhere like a crumbling dike holding back bodily fluids entered my mind.

Mick's nose scrunched as if he'd just come across an unpleasant odor. Another dramatic pause. "Because you leave the head inside your body. And that causes an even bigger problem than blood loss. You're now ready for infection."

Mick straightened his back as he let the image and the lesson sink in on his now fairly disturbed student-journalists.

"So…." Mick held up one finger. "Don't panic."
Mick held up a second finger. "And don't pull it out."

For a week we learned numerous lessons like that, from medical responses to dealing with land mines to becoming a hostage. Minutes after the Aussie instructors had declared us "Hostile Region" worthy, I headed off with my beloved to Langkawi, Malaysia, an island that sits in-between mainland Malaysia and Thailand. My fiancée, Mike, had planned a rainforest getaway right after my AKE course in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Mike had booked us a hotel smack in the middle of a 50 million year old rainforest. Seriously.

As we drove up to the hotel, the driver pointed out to the road.

"Monkey," he said.

"Monkey!" I hollered. The smallish grey monkeys gathered on the road staring at us like chickens, curiously wondering who the next guests to their rainforest might be.

We pulled into the hotel and walked into a foyer of sweeping grandeur: wood pagodas, marble walls, attendants in white ready to meet our every need. As we walked to the room, the immense trees swayed in the humid jungle air, accompanied by the screeching sound of thousands of cicadas.

"This is the nicest hotel I've ever seen," I said to Mike.

"Yeah," he said, fatigue clinging to that word like thick syrup. Poor Mike. He'd gotten a terrible cold our first night in Kuala Lumpur and five days later, it hung on with a force he couldn't shake.

Mike insisted that I get out and see the jungle. "If I can't, one of us should," he said, lying prone on the bed. I scanned the list of adventures offered by the hotel. 'Jungle Trek' promised a four hour, strenuous hike through untamed jungle. That had my name all over it.

The next morning, I met up with my guide, a deeply tanned Malaysian man wearing mud-splattered pants and carrying a walking stick. He repeated his name three times for me, but I still didn't quite get it. There are quite a few vowels in the names of the locals in Langkawi and in the case of my multi-vowel-named guide… I decided to just call him "sir." We picked up two other guests from the next hotel, a middle-aged couple from Australia. I haven't met too many natives of Australia, so perhaps this is a rather uneducated generalization, but all the Aussies seem to be seriously tough people. The Aussies were both six feet tall and from the looks of their muscular bodies, they were used to getting into the wilderness. The man in particular looked like he might be former military (this assumption may be from my week of being instructed by Australian former Special Forces officers). They told me they lived in Dubai and traveled around the world frequently. I worried about keeping up.

The description in the hotel did not exaggerate the 'Jungle Trek.' We slipped and climbed, the jungle floor a knot of mangy limbs, roots, prehistoric looking leaves and vines.

"This tree," said our guide, "strangles host tree." He pointed to the knotted tree, that looked remarkably like a muscular limb, 70 feet high into the sky. "Inside, hollow."

I peeked into the tree. It was indeed hollow. The guide explained how the original tree probably had a bird land on one of its high limbs. The Langkawi jungle is home to a type of seed that birds ingest. The bird craps the seed onto a limb and then the seed settles into its host and begins to vine down the host tree to the jungle floor. Eventually, the vine circles the tree and strangles the original tree. All that remains of the now-dead host is some petrified wood at the top of the now encircling vines.

The guide walked us along, telling us stories about the animals, roots, vines and trees. The theme of the jungle became apparent. The weak die. The strong feed off the weak and flourish.

About 90 minutes into the hike, the guide led us to a tree that had toppled over a bubbling creek. "Sit, rest," he said. He squatted on the tree trunk. "Can't sit or sleep in the jungle, because of leeches." He reached down and pulled off a tiny, squiggly looking worm.

"Really?" said the Aussie woman.

"Really??" asked her husband. "Holy crap, I'm flogged!"

I looked at his leg, which had several leeches moving up and down it.

And then I pulled up my pants leg, which brings me back to my dance song and the seven or eight leeches on my leg.

I shook my leg. Nothing happened. "Uh…" I waved my arms at my guide. Dammit. I wish I knew his name, I thought.

The guide moved over to me and pulled one off. He shook his hand, the leech still stuck to it. He gave it four more shakes and a flick… and then it was gone. I looked down at my leg again, trying to remember the advice, "don't panic." Where the leech had been was a red circle, where the infernal thing had been sucking my blood. His friends were still sucking away.

"We're not supposed to pull them off, right?" I asked my guide. I looked at the tough Australian couple, now fully freaking out.

"They fly!" the woman shrieked. Fly isn't quite how I'd describe this particular type of leech. Somersault toward you at every angle and magically crawl under your pants, your socks and down to your toes seems more accurate. I have no idea how they do it, since my hiking shoes were tied as tight as can be.

"They're all over my calf!" the man screamed, revealing four engorged leeches and two big bloody blotches where a couple had fallen off.

"You're bleeding," said his wife.

The man's eyes widened. "They're on my bum, they're on my bum! Mary, check my bum!" The next thing I knew, he pulled down his pants in front of the 50 million year old jungle, me, and our bemused guide. When people are freaking out around me, I've learned I often have the exact opposite reaction, as if they absorb my anxiety. I also wanted to bring some civility into our little group so we didn't spiral out of control in front of the very calm Malaysian guide. The man waved his hands around his naked bottom. So much for Aussie toughness.

And so much for my week of Aussie survival skills. I turned to the guide, who hadn't responded to my question of whether to pull them off or not. He was pulling them off with ease, apparently not a graduate of my 'Surviving Hostile Regions' course. I watched another leech somersault onto my leg. Enough, I thought, and I began to yank those suckers off, one by one. Some hadn't fully attached so they came off easily. But some looked like they had burrowed into my body and I had indeed left their heads floating somewhere in my bloodstream. Infection seemed a far lesser pain than the horror of the leeches on me right now.

"I got another one, I know it! It's in my shoe!" screamed the Australian woman as we continued our hike.

The problem of being on the floor of a massive, untamed jungle is that the pests don't recede. I've since learned that leeches in Malaysia are heat-seeking. No kidding. We continued our now 'Hike of Horror' not really caring about the lovely stories about the damn trees. Every 20 yards or so, someone would be pulling off another leech. I noticed, too, that what I thought was mud splattering our guide's pants wasn't mud at all. It was blood spots from leeches.

At the end of the hike, cut short by an hour because of the hollering Australians, we took off our shoes and socks. I found three more at the bottom of my feet and two more on my ankles. I also had several big, red spots where some of the leeches had successfully burrowed in. Giving my legs a twice over, I was fairly convinced I was leech free.

I went back to the resort and ran to the hotel room. Mike sat near the window, clean and calm and appearing a little healthier. I hollered from the door, "I can't come in. I walked through the jungles and I think there are still leeches on me so I want to go into the water." Mike tells me later that I looked like someone had killed my cat. But in MY memory, I was the picture of calm and repose.

I did remember that leeches need to be burned or salted off. They don't like extreme heat or salt. So as a safety measure, I'd dunk my clothes in the sea water and sit there just in case some had gotten on my 'bum.'

I took off my right sock at the beach and saw a black, engorged leech stuck right in-between my big and second toe. Here's something else I'm learning about me: when I'm in the presence of my beloved, I feel fine freaking out if he's going to be calm.

"Ahhh!" I hollered. "There's another one!"

Mike laughed. Yes, he laughed. Laughed. He was doubled over laughing at me. He was going to be in serious trouble later, but for now, I was the one in trouble. "Go into the ocean," he said, giggling.

I ran to the sea and began to shake my right leg. The dang leech held on. I shook some more. It continued to hang on. I started to rake my toes in the sand. Still there.

"It's still there," I whined, deciding to completely abandon any composure of the last few hours. Mike laughed harder. If I wasn't standing on one leg and the other was being drained by the leech, I would have tried to dunk him in the ocean.

"Do you want me to pull it off?" he laughed.

"No!" I said, "Sea water's supposed to do it. The AKE guys said they don't like salt."

Mike continued to laugh while I shook my leg in the water. Forget it, I thought, mad at the leech and my so-called loved one.

I pulled half of it off. It was really stuck on there. I turned to Mike.

"Pull it off!" I said.

Mike reached down and grabbed for it. The first grab was unsuccessful and it either grossed him out or he feared for his own welfare and the leech ending up on him.

He made a second attempt and this time, I felt the leech suction off my toe. Mike flicked it into the sea water.

I immediately sat down in the sea water as Mike laughed and laughed so hard I thought he might tip over. I could now feel phantom leeches in my swimsuit, on my legs, in my hair and under my armpits. That feeling would not go away for the rest of the day. And when the feeling would fade, I'd start to imagine little leech heads floating around in my bloodstream.

In my first test of my 'Surviving Hostile Regions' course, I come away with this important lesson learned: hearing the lesson is one thing, application is quite another.

For more information on leeches copy and paste this link in a browser...

http://malaysiaupclose.wordpress.com/category/jungle-leeches/

KL & the Leaping Leeches (or Mike's take on the story)

KL and the leaping leech

I got the Malaysian flu. Don't know if there is such a thing, but when I got to Malaysia I came down with it. Headache, weak, achy, fever, congested, sore throat… basically every symptom of Dengue Fever I found out about after KL came back from her Hazardous Environment training. Great. Leave it to me to get Dengi-freakin-fever the one time I come to Malaysia (truly Asia).

Well, I didn't really get any better. We stayed in Kuala Lumpur for 5 days and I saw a lot of my hotel and very little of the city. I hear the Chinatown is wonderful. Can't tell you from first hand experience though. I can tell you about the Japanese Embassy. I went there twice to get our Japanese work Visa's. The ladies at the Tokyo office told us it would be much quicker to go through the office in Malaysia than wait on the crowded office in Tokyo. So fever and all, I headed off to the Embassy. It is white and designed by a devotee of the cubist architecture school. Inside they have NHK on the TV. Across the street is a beautiful Spanish island motif building that houses the Mercedes -Benz dealership.

After I got the visas, 3 year work permits permanently stamped into our passports, and KL finished her class we jetted off for Langkawi.

I was feeling better. A lot better. Right up until we took an aero plane ride. This patient took a steep nosedive after the flight. KL, as many of you know, has the energy of 10 men so she needed to do –something-. The hotel, which is the best place we have in our entire lives ever thought about staying, had a jungle trek scheduled for the next day! Good. Go, I say. I would love to go but I am in no shape to march through this 50 million year old rainforest. Go tire yourself out and take pictures. I want to hear all about it. And it only costs 100 ringgits. Hell, go twice.

The next day dawned and KL jumped into her REI convertible pants (they are made of a lightweight material and can zip off at the thigh to become shorts), Gore-Tex shoes, ankle brace, socks, and technical long-sleeved shirt (it wicks moisture away keeping you cool and dry in the heat and has sun-block built-in). I felt better but still not up to the adventure she can't wait to embark upon.

A little more than 3 hours later, I'm sitting on the couch in our room looking out over the rich verdant green of our small patch of paradise. The cleaning crew is doing a number on the room, but I don't want to leave. All at once I hear, "Mike. I'm back but I don't want to come in the room. I want to go to the ocean. I want to go now. I don't feel clean. I have to go now." No, I can't be sure she said all of those things but they're what stick in my head. I have seen my beloved run though a lot of emotions, but the extreme worry and agitation that exuded from her was more than I had ever thought possible. She was in a bad place. Bad things had happened. And as far as she was concerned, bad things were going to continue to happen.

I jumped up and said, "OK. Lets go. Are you sure you don't want to come in?" I asked.

"No. I want to go. I want to get in the seawater. I don't feel good. Let's go now." She responded emphatically.

You know when someone is upset or bothered? You know how in the force of their concentration, agitation comes right out of their forehead? It's like a starving man looks at a Thanksgiving meal. There is a palpable force emanating from them. Almost as if they had another limb. This is how I found my fiancee… standing in the doorway still in her jungle outfit, brows furrowed, lips tight, ears pulled back, worry lines raging across her forehead. She needed to go to the ocean NOW.

We did. I asked her if she was OK. "Noh!" When KL is very upset or emphatic about something and she says No it always comes out Noh. It's a Korean thing. I always hear the h at the end and the force of the No-ness makes me laugh. She was putting a powerful No-ness behind everything she said this day. "There were leeches. I had leeches on me. They were attacking me. I had to pull like 500 of them off of me. They jumped and twisted and somersaulted on to me. They are nasty little creatures. I have to get in the saltwater to make sure they're all gone, OK."

"OK", I agreed.

"Leeches have no value to society," she proclaims. "They don't do any good for the world." I am laughing now. She is so terribly upset. We have the sort of relationship where I can do that. I can laugh at the calamity of it all and it doesn't come back to bite me in the ass. Speaking of asses. "There was this big Australian and when the leeches started attacking he yelled, 'Sarah, there's one on my bum! I know there's one on my bum!' And then he dropped his pants in front of everyone and had his wife look all around his ass." Come on, who wouldn't be laughing now? She tells this to me with a straight face. In fact, a strained face. She is so upset she doesn't even see it as funny. It was horrible. It was a terrifying experience that is still clinging to her. Literally.

By this time she's taken off her shoes and socks. We're down by the ocean. The pants have come off and she's about to take off her ankle brace when she spots the pulsing dark brown mass attached to her right foot. There is a leech sucking her blood from between her big toe and the next. "Ahhh! Off! Offffff! Get off of me!" She screams as she plunges her foot in the water.

"Do you want me to pull it off?" I ask.

"Noh! The AKE guys told us leeches can't live in saltwater and that they will just let go if you put them in it," she explains as she violently kicks her foot back and forth in the ankle deep water.

By this time I am doubling over with laughter. She is so disturbed it is nothing short of comic genius. I wish you could have seen her. To try and get her mind off the little sombitch between her toes I ask, "Tell me about the rest of the trek. Did you enjoy any of it? Did you see any monkeys?"

"Noh. I wish I had stayed home. It was terrible! Our guide told us about trees. For the first hour it was OK, but then we stopped and he told us not to sit on the forest floor because of the leeches. And then he started pulling them off! And I looked down and they were on me! I heard the Australian couple yell and they started pulling them off. They were everywhere. The jungle is most like humans. It kills everything! Only the strong survive, and the leeches were jumping at me. I had to pull off 150 leeches! Stop laughing. It is NOT funny! They were all around me. And I had to pull them off even though the AKE guys told me not to. They said not to panic! Those fuckers have never been in the jungle before with 500 leeches hanging on them! They don't know what it's like. Hazardous Training my ass! Quit laughing!"

Needless to say, I couldn't. This went on for quite some time. I ended up pulling the little blood sucker off of her. It was nasssstee. And for the rest of the day I would look over at her and KL would look at me… every inch of me. She would look me up and down. Searching for the leech she knew was near. Every time something brushed her foot she would stare downward until she was sure whatever it was hadn't attached itself to her skin for a meal. I made leech jokes for the next two days.

I have never seen my girl so out of sorts. She is a well put together woman who does not easily come apart at the seams, but let me tell you, if leeches did it to her I want no, I repeat, no part of them. I'm glad I came down with a case of the Malaysian flu. If I hadn't, I would be sitting right next to my brave and beautiful beloved suffering from a much worse malady... Bdellophobia.

"I don't know if I can wear those shoes again," KL said as she stared down at her Gore-Tex hikers... daring a small black or brown line to move and jump towards her.

I just laughed.

Thought for the day 12-15-07

"You just really have trouble staying in the same tense."

Said to Mike from KL

Lovin' Tokyo

The Japanese are an exceptionally kind, polite and sincere people. They are also not physically affectionate at all. They don't even shake hands. When I first meet people to conduct an interview, my first instinct is to extend my hand, of course. Well, after my first awkward moment where my Japanese subject looked at my hand then touched it like I had some strange disease, I quickly abandoned my American greeting. In lieu of the physical touch, the Japanese accompany their greeting bow with a trade of business cards. I've learned you can't travel anywhere in Japan without a giant stack of business cards. You trade cards on all occasions, especially if you're meeting for business. It's considered extraordinarily rude if you don't have a card to return to the extended card. I emailed my home bureau and begged for a federal express delivery of every remaining business card they could muster.

You don't notice how much you're addicted to affection until you're in a society that doesn't touch at all. I began to notice how no one holds hands on the street, not even the teenagers. Occasionally, you see two really, really old Yoda-looking women holding hands as they walk, but that appears out of necessity. Sometimes the tourists hold hands, but even that appears half-hearted.

"PDA is not really Japanese," said Yoko. Yoko, Junko and I were out for lunch, a quickie diner meal of soba noodles, raw fish and donburi. I was eating the fish, so sick of soba noodles I could nearly flee at the sight of them.

"People don't really hug or show love overtly in Japanese society," Yoko added.

"Except for love hotel," said Junko.

"Love hotel?" I asked, thinking it sort of sounded like an Elvis song. My pop music history remains awful and shallow.

"Love hotel," repeated Junko, her face lighting up.

"You been there!" laughed Yoko.

"No, no," Junko said, a frown immediately flashing across her face. "For story."

"Right," chided Yoko.

"What is a love hotel?" I asked.

"Love hotel is like a place you go with boyfriend," said Junko.

"It has all kinds of themes, like leather, or swings, or even that crazy one, remember Junko?" asked Yoko.

"Hello Kitty!" laughed Junko.

A bright pink hotel room with a life sized, vibrating Hello Kitty bed leaped into my head. "Are you kidding?" I asked.

"No! I see it!" Junko said.

"And everyone has done this?" I asked. "Except for you, of course" I added quickly to Junko.

"Everybody! I'm weird, I don't do when I'm teenager," Junko said.

"There are so, so, so many of them," Yoko said. "If you go to Shibuya, it's everywhere. You can buy for one hour, and they discount after three hours."

"That's nasty," I said. "It seems totally unsanitary. Don't you worry about other people's funk?"
"Funk?" They both looked at me.

"Never mind," I said.

"Rent is so expensive in Tokyo, there's no space, and most people live with their parents until they marry and can afford their own studio," Yoko said. I'd already seen that the average price of a Tokyo studio or one bedroom hovers at $6000 a month. And that's post-bubble-burst in Japan.

"We're only human. Everyone goes," said Yoko. Then mischief filled her small face. "You should take Mike!"

"Nas-tay," I said. But the thought intrigued me. Not the use of it, because I couldn't get over the image of years of piled on, hourly funk in a bed I could potentially use. Though the Hello Kitty room might be worth a tourist picture, I thought, as long as I didn't touch anything.

"What about gay people? If PDA isn't accepted here, what do gay people do?" I'd always ended up somehow finding the gay neighborhood in whatever city I lived in (usually because it's the nicest!). But not Tokyo.

"People accept if you are gay, as long as you don't talk about it," said Yoko. "No politician makes it an agenda. And there was one lesbian who ran as an openly gay lesbian, but she lost."

"Did it have to do with the fact that she's an open lesbian or her candidacy?" I asked.

"Primarily, she didn't have enough support," said Yoko.

"So it's like the US military, don't ask, don't tell?"

"Yes, exactly. But it's not the government, it is society."

I decided that Mike and I would indeed, travel to Shibuya and walk around Love Hotel Hill, as it's called. We took the subway to the bright lights of Shibuya. This edge of Tokyo is another area that's lit up as bright as day, except it's grungier and dirtier and trendier than anywhere in the city. Teenagers and 20-somethings rule this kingdom and the general uniform here is a schoolgirl outfit and spiked heels.

"Hello," I waved my hand in front of Mike's face.

"Yes, my love," he said, his eyes still not averting from the purple haired, leggy 18 year old.

"You're about to violate probation," I said.

We weaved through the sea of people in the thick, humid air of Tokyo's urban jungle. It was nine o'clock but seemed like the middle of a weekend day. Conversations flew all around us, a band played on a street corner surrounded by teased, dyed hair, and motorcycles revved along a side street.

"Look, it's a giant Pac-man," I pointed to the two story high Pac Man that was the center of a gate over an alleyway. The sounds of pachingo slot machines rang out from gambling shops all over Shibuya.

"Look, it's a giant snake," Mike said, pointing up to an enormous plastic snake that covered half of a 12 story building. There simply was too much to look at, too much for my brain to digest at once.

We weaved through one of Shibuya's many tributaries leading to what I hoped might be some food. I'd already abandoned hope of finding Love Hotel Hill, since I hadn't been able to yet successfully find anything on my own yet in Tokyo. But 30 minutes later, we were winding up a hill, as neon flashed back and forth in the alley.

"Hey, do you know what this is?" I asked Mike.

"Uh, no," he said, looking at a group of teenagers sitting on the sidewalk with their brightly colored thongs exposed under their schoolgirl skirts.

"It's the Love Hotels!" I said triumphantly. I walked up to a sign. "See? This is how much you pay for an hour. And see this? This is how much you probably pay for the next hour, or maybe for the whole night."

He raised his eyebrows and kept walking. "Interesting," he said.

We walked all through the hill, surrounded by the flashing neon of the hotel signs. They seemed to have themes, like Yoko and Junko said. Cats, leather, Europe, the Caribbean, disco, etc. They were all the exact opposite of romance.

"This is where they must shoot all that Japanese porn," I said to Mike.

"Maybe we should find another area to get food?" he suggested.

"Something without cream?" I joked. He didn't laugh at that one.

We walked several more blocks before we saw a sign that looked like the entryway to a small restaurant.

"Here?" I asked.

"Okay," he said.

We walked down a flight of stairs to a very small restaurant.

"Irradishe!" called out the waiter. I'm sure I'm butchering what the waiters say, but that's what it sounds like to me. All restaurants, no matter where I've been except for the extraordinarily upscale Park Hyatt Tokyo, have greeted me with that saying.

"Hey," said Mike. He can get away with saying "hey." The Japanese think it sounds cute coming from him. The other night, he said "May I have the check please," read directly out of our Japanese-English dictionary, and our sushi chef and several patrons broke into applause. I get mild amusement, at best.

We sat down at the counter and the waiter greeted us again, pointing to the menu. All Japanese.

"Eigo hanasemasuka?" I asked, asking if he spoke English.

He shook his head apologetically.

"Okay," said Mike. He pointed at the menu. "That."

I looked at the menu, waved my finger over it and it landed on another phrase. "That," I said, looking at our waiter.

He said something in Japanese, and then said, "Okay?"

"Okay," I said. I pointed to three more things.

Our waiter returned with two alcoholic beverages we'd apparently ordered. One was delicious, like a pear martini, and the other was like an awful orange-sprite version that reminded me of spoiled orange crush. Mike valiantly gave me the pear beverage. "Bir-u" he said to the waiter, one of four words he'd mastered in Japanese. The waiter returned with a very cold beer.

He then delivered two sticks of mystery meat. "Liver," he said, apparently knowing more English than he'd let on.

"What kind?" I asked, figuring he could just say something in Japanese.

"Chicken."

Our waiter with a sense of humor left and Mike and I stared at each other. "Okay," he said.

We grabbed our chicken livers on a stick and chowed away. I like fried chicken. I'd been known on occasion to eat the liver of the thigh to gross out my little brother. But I'd never eaten four chunks of solid liver cubes barbequed as a meal. It wasn't bad.

"I wouldn't order that again," said Mike, cleaning off his stick.

The chef who'd been eyeing our progress was starting on our next orders, which both looked like the more pedestrian parts of chicken. I tapped on the glass that separated us and held up our sticks triumphantly.

He stood up taller in surprise and then bowed.

We left Love Hotel Hill without the affection that most couples get here. But we'd gotten a better prize, the respect of a doubting Japanese chef.

The Opposite of Home

Tokyo is exactly 13 hours ahead of Washington, DC, pretty much the
exact opposite time clock as EST. Japan sits almost exactly on the
other side of the globe from where we grew up. So perhaps it only
makes sense that some aspects of life here are rather upside down from
what my American sensibilities are accustomed to.
For instance, thousands of umbrellas dance up and down in the morning
commute as Tokyo's city streets come alive with activity. Nothing
weird about umbrellas, right? Except that it hasn't rained a drop
since I've been here. At a crosswalk on my third day here, I couldn't
help but give in to the urge to touch the umbrella of the
businesswoman standing next to me. Her umbrella was ivory, a shade
darker than the ivory suit she wore, cinched with a patent leather
belt that matched her stiletto heels.
"Sumimasen," I said, head bobbing in a rather shoddy imitation of the
Japanese courtesy bow. Ivory woman returned my bow, her porcelain skin
cracking ever so slightly around her pink mouth. "Sumimasen," I
repeated, my one Japanese word getting more and more practice as the
days progressed, and I reached up to touch her umbrella. Ivory woman
didn't seem to mind, letting the curious American touch her umbrella.
It was cloth. Cloth like the kind you make a fancy t-shirt out of. As
the light changed and Ivory woman bobbed away into the sea of
commuters, another two, three umbrellas passed me. Both apparently
cloth.
When I got to the bureau, I pelted my producer, Yoko, with questions.
"What is the deal? Why are all these women walking around with
umbrellas acting as parasols? Is it to stay cool? Is it custom? A
throw-back to the geisha days?"
Yoko tilted her head and smiled at me. I like Yoko. She's fiercely
independent and smart and funny to boot. She's also my fixer, my
interpreter, my cultural guide and crazy 8 ball to numerous silly
questions.
"To stay white," she said, her British lilt extending out the vowel in
'white.' Yoko scrunched her nose and pointed at her freckles.
"Japanese women don't like freckles or suntan. They like white."
"So it IS all about the geisha," I joked.
According to Yoko, it sort of is. Japanese sexuality in the culture is
at once repressed and overtly expressive, the way geisha are visible
but covered from head to toe in kimonos and white paint. The white
skin represents beauty. Perhaps that's why my mother, raised in Japan
in her younger years, was appalled at my tanning contest in the third
grade with my childhood friend, RaShawn Bryant, and that I was able to
get darker than my black friend at least twice. This whole white skin
thing doesn't make sense to me. In the US, we love to tan and it's a
sign of vacations and health. I get tan at the drop of the hat much to
the envy of my white counterparts. Yet here, they want to stay as pale
as possible, carrying around a giant umbrella to protect them from the
sun.
"I guess it's handy if it rains," I said to Yoko.
"No, it's no good in rain. It leaks."
So even that doesn't make any sense at all.
As I quizzed Yoko about the silliness of the umbrellas for rain versus
the umbrellas for sun, I dove into a topic I'd been dying to ask her
about.
"So tell me about the toilets. What is the deal?"
Let me explain first, that when I first got to Japan and checked into
my hotel room, I needed to pee really, really bad. I'd been holding it
for so long that it took me a second to get going. In that second of
concentration before I let it all go, a noise came from the toilet.
Not just any sort of noise... a noise like I was already peeing. But
as I said, this was the second before I let it go. It scared me so bad
I lifted my butt off the seat and looked down into the toilet. The
toilet looked fine. Nothing swimming in there. Had jet lag affected me
so bad that my system was literally off time with my body? I
sat down again with some hesitation and the dribbling water sound
reappeared.
"So seriously, what's that all about?" I asked Yoko. I'd already asked
her about why there's no deodorant at the stores, why the cups at
restaurants are so small and why there are no trash cans in the city.
This question was just a evolution of our growing, working
relationship.
"It's so you are not rude. No one wants to hear someone make noise in
the toilet."
I couldn't believe it. Politeness in the culture exceeded even my
colorful imagination. Yoko then leaned over to me as if to tell me a
secret, her eyes getting wide in her small face like an anime
character.
"Have you tried the water?"
I thought she meant did I try drinking from the toilet.
"No," she said laughing, "I mean, have you tried the wash? Most
Americans don't do it."
"The wash. Is that what all those buttons are next to the toilet?" On
Japanese toilets, there are a series of buttons and knobs that sit
attached to the seat. They show pictures of a rear end and drops of water,
but I'd been so horrified by the water noise every time I sit on the
toilet, I'd been too intimidated to hit any of the buttons.
"Yes," she said. Her eyes got even wider. Yoko explained how it
removes the need for toilet paper, thereby being better for the
environment and better for your personal hygiene. "You try, and you
never go back."
Her words rang in my ears every time I used the toilet for the next
several days. I kept thinking about trying it, but too many questions
lingered. Do you hit the button after you flush? Or hit the button
before? But then does it recycle the water in the toilet? The thought
grossed me out.
"Did you try?" Yoko prodded again and again.
"No," I said, repeatedly. I began to dread going to the bathroom
around Yoko. But her question began to wear me down, make me feel like
I was a repressed American refusing to venture into new lands of
cultural exploration. About four days after our "talk", I decided to
try it.
"Okay," I said to my talking toilet. "Here goes."
I chose a moment when I DIDN'T have to use it, to eliminate the question
of where the water originates from. I chose button #1, the rear end with
the drops of water near it. It certainly looked friendlier than button
#2, that showed a behind with LOTS of water splashing it. My finger
hovered over button #1, and then I pressed it.
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I certainly didn't expect what
I got. A rather urgent, warm stream of water, like the "stream" button
on the windex I use to clean my windows, shot directly into my... y'know. And I mean bulls-eye. I immediately let go of the button and
looked around, as if expecting applause or horror or Reverand Yun from
my childhood to pounce on me.
I'm learning some stuff about myself here in Tokyo. I
don't care if I'm tan in the summer. In fact, I think it's sort of
creepy to be as white as some of these women are. I think the Japanese
are endlessly fascinating so far. What I'm also learning is that some
things, for me, are better left unknown.
I didn't hit button #2.

Illiterate in Kanji

Every morning I have an adventure I like to call: "The Mystery of the
Rice Ball." It begins as soon as I step out of the hotel and begin my
short walk to the Tokyo bureau. On the way, there are a number of kwik
stops-convenience stores I can dive into for a grab and go breakfast,
just like the Japanese do every morning. The kwik stops in Tokyo are
extraordinary. They bear little resemblance to the nasty Subway-Citgo
stops in the US. The shelves are packed with fresh veggies, fruits,
sushi, rice cakes and loads and loads of brewed green tea. Sparkling
clean and delightfully inviting, the Tokyo kwik stop is a neon joy of
culinary adventure before heading into work.
Morning always accompanies a personal resurgence to fully embrace the
culture and live like a Tokyoite, so I'm always excited about what the
rice ball will hold this morning. My favorite morning kwik stop has a
couple dozen rice balls sitting on three shelves. I call them rice
balls, though perhaps the better description would be rice triangle.
Somehow that doesn't quite have the same ring. Each one contains some
sort of fish, meat, or veggie in the center of the rice and is
delicately wrapped in seaweed. The wrapper is engineered with sheer
genius, carefully designed so there's a thin layer of wax paper that
separates the seaweed from the rice (to avoid any sogginess) yet
easily peels away when you unwrap the breakfast treat. Each rice ball
looks exactly the same, yet each one contains some different sort of
item inside. Hence, the mystery. When you don't read the language at
all, it's really just a crap shoot. Sometimes it's crap, sometimes
it's a shot of goodness.
I started out just buying one, but like so much about Japan, it's too
dang small to suffice as any sort of respectable meal. I now buy four.
Call it bridging the gap between my American needs and my need to
experience Japan. Each of my morning rice balls I pick with wild
abandon, usually by the color of the label. This morning, I picked
blue, pink, yellow, and green.
Blue: Some chicken-mayo mix. Bordering on gross.
Pink: Smoked salmon! Delicious.
Yellow: Corn. Dis-gus-ting! Seriously, who eats corn wrapped with rice
and seaweed?
Green: Seaweed. I found this to be shockingly redundant. Why eat
seaweed with rice and seaweed? It's like that 80's trend where girls
who shopped at the Gap matched their socks exactly to their tops,
separated by denim. I don't get that. Too much redundancy.
As I finished my seaweed on seaweed rice ball, the bureau's office
manager, Junko, asked me which was my favorite. I told her the salmon
one.
"You got good one!" she said. Junko's English is quite stilted so she
sounds a little like Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid.
"Don't you always pick the salmon one?" I asked her.
"No, not look always," she said. "Sometimes good surprise. Sometimes good fun!"
I'm all about fun. But I'm also about self-preservation of my taste
buds. I asked Junko to write down "corn" in Kanji (the Japanese
alphabet) so I could avoid that nastiness in the future.
I've found it remarkably easy to be in Japan so far without knowing
any Kanji at all. Much of the subway and important street signs are
written in both Kanji and English. And with the exception of the
occasional corn-rice-ball, there haven't been too many severe
consequences of being illiterate here. But there are occasional
mishaps... paying too much for something, missing an inside joke, and
ordering the wrong item at the restaurant.
Most of the restaurants, thankfully, have pictures accompanying the
menu. It's incredibly helpful, as you might imagine. After my
corn-rice-ball breakfast and a fruitful day at work, I headed out to a
recommended sushi restaurant. I couldn't find it, of course. Since
none of the buildings are marked in numerical order, I have yet to
find any store, restaurant or destination recommended to me by the
bureau employees or my guidebook. So I dove into another sushi
restaurant and settled in for some raw fish.
At the entryway of the restaurant swam giant king crab, those poor
creatures swimming their last moments before becoming steamed dinner.
I paused only for a second and headed to the sushi bar. I opened up
the menu and saw a cornucopia of sushi and sashimi specials. Never
mind that there's no English. Who needs English when you have the
pictures! I pointed at the sashimi special I wanted and watched the
chef cut up my dinner.
When my dinner arrived, it was the picture of culinary delight.
Brightly colored fish lay neatly in rows awaiting my soy sauce and
wasabi dip. But something didn't look quite right. The rather sizable
crab leg looked a little off-color, nothing like the steamed king crab
legs at the all you can eat buffet bar at the Rio in Las Vegas. It was
cracked in the center, the meat a shiny pink poking out. Shiny and
pink. That's the problem.
The crab leg wasn't cooked.
Maybe it's crazy of me to be disturbed by the crab leg when I seem to
have no issue at all chowing down 30 pieces of raw fish. But the crab
leg was long. Huge. Suddenly it was apparent to me that it could have
been attached to one of those giant king crabs at the entryway to the
restaurant mere minutes ago. I could imagine the leg, happily wading
along somewhere in the Pacific, until Miko the fisherman just had to
go and wreck his day. I named it. Called the leg Harry. In fact, the
leg looked a litte hairy uncooked, sitting there, wrecking my
appetite. I wondered if king crab, when ripped apart by the sushi
chef, make a silent scream like lobster before boiling to death. I
poked it. And then decided I couldn't eat it.
"Sumimasen," I called to the waiter. I figured he might take it better
than the sushi chef who was holding an enormous kitchen knife. The
waiter diligently jogged over.
I pointed at the crab leg and gave him a thumbs down. His smile
dropped into an open mouthed look of disappointment.
He went to grab the entire sushi tray and I said, "No."
I pointed at the leg again and gave him the thumbs down and pointed
back at the crab leg.
"Ah, so," he said, understanding dawning across his face.
He grabbed the crab leg plate and jogged off. He returned a few
minutes later. I saw the steam first. It wafted over his head as he
jogged back toward me, a steamy, piping hot crab leg on his tray. As a
way to make amends to his dissatisfied customer, he brought an
enormous crab leg packed with white, cooked meat.
It was delicious.
Illiteracy does have its drawbacks. But it also can bring a lot of
interesting surprises.

A Tokyo Thanksgiving

My ears would not pop.
Aboard the bullet train to Kyoto, Japan, I urged my ears to cooperate and please, friggin pop! I'm not exactly sure how fast we're traveling aboard this sleek train that has the nose of a 747 jet yet stretches long like a NYC passenger train at rush hour. I'd guess somewhere around 150 mph. Mph doesn't mean much in Japan, but kilometers per hour doesn't mean much to me yet. I hope to learn to convert my American measurements to world standards, both for my sake and Mike's.
"How hot is 47 celsius?" he asked me from the shower room earlier this week. I call it the shower room because it's a separate room from the fancy Japanese toilet (the toilet that sprays clean water at your butt, blow dries, and then deodorizes it). The shower room comes equipped with its own steam, heating and cooling station, and self-filling tub. Mike was currently planning on trying out the self-filling tub which also heats itself. Catch is, you have to set the desired temperature. And fahrenheit ain't no good here.
"I have no idea," I called out as I ran out of the door to work.
Mike emailed an hour later to say he scalded himself and would remain indoors until his skin returned to normal from its current blistering red. I still don't know what 47 degrees celsius is, but I bet it's over 100 degrees.
Back to my ears aboard the bullet train... I thought that eating my lunch would help, but it didn't. Perhaps because my bento box had very little in it to actually chew. The food was beautiful... all colorful and shaped like little flowers and round balls. Not the sort of meal I'd ever eaten on Thanksgiving, but it certainly looked gorgeous! The soft veggies and tofu and rice did nothing to help alleviate the pressure in my head (or take care of my hunger). I held two fingers up to the train attendant pushing the small concessions stand through the aisle and pointed at the bottled, unsweeted, cold green teas. I hoped that by swallowing mass amounts of liquid, I'd unlodge my pesky ears. Unsweetened green tea, by the way, is kinda good cold if you expect it to totally suck. Mid-way through bottle two, they popped! And I finally began to enjoy the scenery whizzing by. I stared out of the window and saw for the first time, the majesty of Mount Fuji.
"This is where two samurai clans fought," explained Yoko. "It gets very, very cold here and snowy. It's known for how fierce the spirit of the samurai can be, in battle with each other and nature." Tom Cruise in 'The Last Samurai' flashed before my eyes, which is probably not what Yoko intended. Yoko got that calm, serious look in her face as she explained the samurai history. I like it when she takes on that teacher tone. It makes me feel like I'm back in school but with a way cooler instructor.
"Kyoto," Yoko said, "is the spiritual capitol of Japan. The Imperial family used to live here before the Edo era. There is much mysticism, religion and history here." I'd read about Kyoto in my 'Japan for Idiots' guide and looked forward to seeing any of it, especially the lush temples that cover the ancient city. Unfortunately, we were going to be rushing in and out of the city, because of our deadline. My story was to interview the Japanese stem cell researcher, the pioneer of the stem cells that don't use human embryos. I wasn't really looking forward to it. In past interviews, I found scientists to be unattractive lab rats who don't communicate well and have the emotional range of a toaster. I couldn't imagine my Japanese scientist would be any better, especially translated.
We got to Kyoto University and a young, good looking guy in a turtleneck greeted us.
"Hello," he said to me with crisp English, "I'm Professor Shinya Yamanaka."
"Hello!" I said a little too loudly and happily. The day was looking better and better. We sat down at his computer and Prof. Yamanaka began to tell me about all the emails that came in overnight. The grandfather of a 10 year old parapeligic, the wife of a parkinson's patient, a quadrapeligic... all hoping this man could play God and cure them.
"I tell them, I'm trying. I'm really trying. Please try and wait."
"How do you tell someone who is searching for hope to wait?" I asked him.
"It's so hard," he said, "it is so hard." Prof. Yamanaka's head bent down from exhaustion, his 16 hours in the lab visible suddenly on his young face. It was the best interview I'd ever had with a scientist.
Back on the bullet train, Yoko handed me another bento-type box. There were eight little balls inside of tofu-looking veggie things. They were a little mushy but helped quiet the growling in my belly. My ears popped quickly this time as the bullet train picked up speed toward Tokyo. And I remembered again that today is Thanksgiving. I picked up the final mushy ball and stuck it in my mouth. What I wouldn't give for a full turkey meal shared with Mike and the family... But I can't say I'd change much more about this day.

Japan Day 3

We moved here from Washington D.C. on November 17, 2007. KL is a new Tokyo based correspondent. I am her fiancé. I have no job but do have the world laid out before me. KL makes enough for me not to work, although I do hope to pick up a paycheck or two along the way.

The flight to Japan is 14 hours long and feels about that long. But before we boarded, we got our place in D.C. packed up by members straight from central casting. Maud shook my hand, introducing Junior, his friend Jeff, and "Up there in the truck, there's Senior." A family of movers with a friend along for the ride would be packing up our life. The first day they packed up most of our stuff into three categories: storage, air freight, and sea freight. KL and I went out for a great steak over at Ruth's Chris to celebrate our last few nights in America. The rest of the night was not so nice. We slept on the remaining bed with no pillows, no blankets, and no sheets. She bundled up in my packing pants and her superman jacket, one of my sweaters rolled up under her head for a pillow. I did much the same; my travel pillow pulled out and my jacket turned into a blanket.

The next day Manny, Mo, and Jack came back and packed up the rest of the belongings de la Tuggle. When all was said and done, we drove into town in the Kerley's Honda minivan to pick up O.J., the editor/shooter who's putting together a new reporter tape for me. He met us on the corner of 16^th and Eye Street in front of an Au Bon Pain. A few fixes later and we were off to pick up reporter extraordinaire, David Kerley, at his bureau. Traffic was a nightmare, but we made it to McLean, VA with little trouble. Dave and I sat about drinking and talking while Janet and KL went out for the food. Dave told me he envied the chance to check out and experience a new world without the pressure of paying the bills. I know what he means. It is just shy of great.

For dinner, I pulled out the best bottle of wine I know of (Dead Arm) and we all shared in it. Dave snoozed over the after dinner conversation and we finally headed off to bed. We were mere hours away from saying goodbye to the country we've called home for more than 30 years. In the middle of the night, I got up to use the restroom. As I stood before my half-dome of relief, my private time was interrupted by a crash, bang, boom, ouf, clunk! When nature has finally run its course, I tentatively opened the door. The light in the hall had just gone off and left me blind.

"Anybody need any help?" I asked. The light flipped back on.

"Did someone fall down the stairs?" asked a visibly confused Janet.

"Well, I didn't," is all I say, knowing full well it's just the kind of thing that could happen to my lovely, soon-to-be wife. I'm worried at this point, but I see the Kerley's dog hovering near the top of the stairs. Maybe Belle made all that noise, I think. She's an excitable dog. So I slowly walked to the dark bedroom only to find a too-empty bed.

"Shit! Where's KL?" Then she walked up behind me, seemingly OK. I asked her the
obvious, "Did you fall down the stairs?" Yes, yes she did. KL decided she needed to go to the restroom, too, and she wasn't going to wait on me to finish. So she got up and started walking down the stairs to the bathroom on the first floor. The only problem was that she was sleepy, wearing socks and trying to climb down an uncarpeted wooden staircase. She showed me her scratched thumb. Crazy good luck. I thought she might be really injured. I was very worried about her.

The next day, we went to the airport with Dave and Janet. He was off to Chicago for a fundraiser. We were off to Japan. KL took a sleeping pill on the plane and it sort of worked but I just stayed up watching bad airplane movies. United sucks. Not only did they not seat us together (leaving us to swap seats on our own), the food was very average, the service matched the fare, and the seats just aren't that comfortable. But it was the only nonstop from D.C. to Tokyo's Narita airport. So we took it.

14 hours later (have I mentioned it feels like it?) we landed and found our taxi driver wearing a hat bearing the name of KL's new job.

"Are you Mister Lah?" he asked.

My proud answer, "Yes!" He had iced coffees for us in the car and barely enough room for the 7 pieces of baggage we dragged off the plane. An hour and a half later, we stumbled, tired and weary from the trip, into the Oakwood corporate housing of Tokyo. The company set us up in a very spacious, fully furnished one bedroom apartment on the 11^th floor of this earthquake-prone city. There is a flat screen, a huge rice cooker, a coffee maker, knives, spoons, chopsticks, plates, pots, and a radio. We have to take our shoes off to walk around in the apartment – it's a very old Japanese tradition. Our toilet performs more functions than the cars we left in the States. It warms the seat, sprays water on your butt in normal and soft speed, is a bidet, controls the pressure and position of said water, will blow your wet butt dry, and add a bit of perfume to said-sometimes unmentionables. The shower room is much the same. There is a normal shower, a self-filling tub, and reheat button for said tub, a cool breeze, heater, ventilator, and dryer function for the room itself. I don't know how to work most of the functions, but today I did manage to scald myself in the self-filling tub with water around 45 degrees Celsius. I am not that good at making the conversions yet. But I'm burning… no learning, one day at a time.

We also have the smallest oven, washer/dryer combo, and dishwasher either of us has seen. They build them small here in Japan. Space is at a premium and you can tell.
We slept hard that first night, but I got up just in time to tune my Apple Mac Book to the Slingbox/TiVo combo I have hooked up in Atlanta and watch the University of Georgia play some ball. The Dawgs won! We beat Kentucky and are waiting for Tennessee to drop one so we can go to Atlanta and play for the S.E.C. conference championship against L.S.U.
That same day, KL watched the Grey's Anatomy I taped for her and she was oh-so-happy. Our new motto is, "We love technology. It will keep us sane." I taped a few games and will watch them through the week. I am totally digging the whole TiVo experience right now and Slingbox just kicks ass. It allows you to watch TV anywhere in the world that you have a high-speed Internet connection and a computer. I have watched American TV in Jordan, Pakistan, and, of course, The Land of the Rising Sun.

Or should I say The Land of the Early Setting Sun? In the winter the sun starts to go down at 2 p.m. I'm watching the sun go down from our terrace right now and it is just thirty minutes shy of three o'clock. The pink sun is reflecting off the glass buildings before me.

On Sunday, we went out for lunch (since we slept though breakfast) and stopped off at the grocery store. We bought what ended up being about $100 of groceries. Didn't look like much when we got it home. We had 5 fat big grocery bags worth of food, but US money doesn't go very far over here.

Tokyo is one of the top 5 most expensive cities to live in, and so far it feels that way. It took us forever to choose what to buy at the store. You can sort of figure it out, but it takes about twice as long since very little of the food packaging has English written on it. We got back and unpacked, which took most of our remaining strength. The end of the night found us eating food from a 7-11. We both had some microwave noodles, rice cakes, and beer. A sleeping pill later and we were in bed.

KL got up on Monday to start her new job. I always wanted to be a foreign correspondent. She didn't, and is. Life is crazy. She went to work and I sat around watching the New England Patriots beat the hell out of the Buffalo Bills on my Slingbox. Then I had that aforementioned tub and finally went for a walk. Now I'm back putting the finishing touches on this little note and getting ready for a nap.

So far, life in Tokyo for this Southern boy is just fine.