The allergy thing cleared up- It turns out to probably have been something I ate. The doctor pilled me up with steroids, and the swelling went away. Aside from one case of Roid Rage where I flipped over a city transit bus, everything’s been pretty relaxed.

24 hour trip starting at 6:30AM on Monday morning, and I got to Japan at 5:00 Tuesday evening. United totally overbooked the flight so it was totally full. I was trapped in the middle, two people on each side, and am currently cramped up, but getting over it. Orie saw to my left, and to her left was this bizarre dude, a corporate of some kind, who had this getup of huge ear plus, eyemask, inflatable cushion, inflatable backrest, and joked loudly about how “we only get to go past him two times” (because of all the work it takes to get out of his getup to let us go to the bathroom). Aside from wanting to break his face, and constantly being fed decent but buttery food, and having Fantastic Four playing three times in front of me, it was all good. Got a lot of reading in.

Anyway, tonight we’re building plans for tomorrow and the next day: Probably some mountain climbing and soba/sushi eating tomorrow, and generally hanging about Maebashi. FOr those of you with Google Earth, type in MAEBASHI JAPAN to see that area.

Went to the local bookstore tongiht to start building a buy list of PS2 games, books, manga and the like: Man, it’s worse than I thought, there’s a lot of decent looking games out, and it’s going to be hard to decide between them. Manga is more like like finding the latest 2-4 volumes of manga that I’ve been reading, plus polling friends for the latest and greatest.

Well, it’s almost 12 and time to go to sleep. Before that I gotta climb into the Japanese tub over here (I literally have been looking forward to the bath for like over a year)… currently watching TV, which is a trip. Watching this comedy team show “ways to pick up girls”. “How to pick up a girl while drinking a beer/eating a hamburger/doing a crossword puzzle/eating raw eggs”. The hamburger one was funny: The guy takes a bite out of a juicy burger, and wipes the juice of the side of his mouth with a wad of basically $100 bills. Most of the rest of TV can be broken down into Dramas, Quiz Shows and Trivia/Knowledge shows. Man, I wish I could get this back in the US.

Anyway, heading out for a few days. I probably won’t have this kind of time to blog regularly, as the only PC I have easy access to is this Sony Vaio here with microscopic keys, a 10 minute boot time with Win2K, and a power supply so weak that the PC immediately dies when the AC plug is pulled, and the S key is kinda sticky/broken…