Japan Again

Those in the know may be aware to the fact that I am fixing to be wed in a few months. As is customary with such events, I embarked on a so-called "Bachelor Party" to Japan. Super cliche, I know. I was originally thinking Scotland, but they seem to have a problem with midges and throngs of tourists this time of year. Thusly, I embarked from LAX to Narita with the gentleman in the blue shirt sitting behind me. He weaseled his way into United business class and insisted on following me through customs and would not leave me for the rest of the trip.

The gentleman in blue, whom we shall henceforth refer to as "Greg," remarked that he was very happy with the ubiquity of bathrooms in Japan as well as their overall cleanliness. These are things that are very important to him. While searching for an ATM, we were interviewed by a Japanese TV station and asked why we came to Japan. I did a bit of research on this, and apparently it's an ongoing segment every Monday.

They were intrigued with me because this was my fourth visit. When asked why I keep coming back, I said because people are very respectful, friendly, and I like all the buttons on their toilets. I'm not sure if something got lost in translation because it didn't elicit the chuckles I had hoped for.


We arrived at our hotel in Tokyo sometime  around 4:00pm. While "Greg" claimed he slept a lot on the plane, I did not. That being said, we set out to do a bit of exploring. We took the subway to Shinjuku to look at all the lights and take in the chaos.

From Shinjuku, we walked all the way to the Tokyo Tower, which is not particularly close, but we didn't also want to deal with rush hour in Tokyo and getting pushed with white gloves into a subway. We eventually got there, and it was a fairly calm walk once we got out of Shinjuku at least. We ate crepes underneath it. It was a complete pseudo French experience with Japanese crepes being eaten under an Eiffel Tower imposter.

We eventually made our way to a subway stop and headed back to Ginza, where our hotel is located. I had been awake for about . . . I don't know. I've been awake too long to do math. Until tomorrow...