10-17-06 TUESDAY “Better Than Bubble-Wrap”

10-17-06 TUESDAY “Better Than Bubble-Wrap”

Before I checked out of the ryogen with an hour flight to return us to the New Otani in Tokyo, we had some breakfast, again food being the main feature of this type of establishment’s focus. It was pretty good, as all the trip’s food was, featuring a mini crock pot of rice with bacon in it over an open flame and some kind fish (raw of course) still on the bone. Eggs were also served, however, they were not cooked!

From talking to a few of the people at the table, I learned that a number of their host families engaged in eating raw eggs. Many would just crack the egg open into a salad or over some rice and slurp it up all yellow-yokey; uncooked just like the chicken made it.

Laurie, who I believe is a vegetarian for the most part, on this particular morning took the egg and boiled it in a crock-pot.

We jumped back on the plane and I read a bit and played some with my some 2,000 pictures. An uneventful trip, aside from seeing Mount Fuji from the window, provided us with a very smooth landing –perhaps may I say, the smoothest one ever. It felt like we didn’t even touch ground and we were down.

Back at the New Otani in Tokyo, I picked up my bag of junk which I had left before leaving for Arao a week ago. Next, I snuck in a run before some of us wanted to go out to Asakusa for some last minute shopping by the Asakusa shrine with Deborah and Mary Ann.

I finally found a few shirts with Japanese script, however, none of them were my size. I did pick up some alcohol though for the hommies back at home who would love to try some saki. (I am so thoughtful, as I am not much of a drinker myself.) Being allowed to have a second check bag to get home, as we were only allowed to have one bag on the way here, I was seriously running out of space.

Later that night, we traveled back to Tokyo’s answer to Times Square, Shibuya Station, for one last romp through the world’s busiest intersection. On the train ride over, we hooked up with two American G.I’s who were looking for something fun to do, before being sent off to Korea, as Korea has acted up again in the U.N. in it’s hopes to be a nuclear world-wide force. I introduced the G.I’s to Hachiko and then we stopped into Harley Davidson - Shibuya so that one of the teachers could pick up a $70 t-shirt.

After we peaked into a number of little shops, we called it a night with a last peak at TOWER RECORDS – a CD store that has eight separate floors of music categorized by genre.

Back at the hotel, my strategy for getting three big bottles and four little bottles smuggled back into the states was interesting. I put the four little ones into shoes, wrapped one in a shirt and the other two in bottles. There is some restriction I think on bringing too much alcohol in particularly back into the states, but my plan did work, and with no broken bottles. Many of us stressed out about what to do to get all our stuff home with the different weight restrictions that had been placed against us.

I actually ended up using the majority of my clothing to wrap all my goodies in to save space, rather than newspaper. And let me tell you, underwear is better than bubble-wrap.