Day 2.5 -- still no jet lag!

Yesterday was a blast -- I had no work to do here, so Sam took me sight-seeing. We went to a shrine in Akasuka where you buy a fortune based on your age for 100 yen (about a dollar). Mine was good, but Sam's, not so much -- the last line was "Marriage and employment must be stopped." There are wires nearby where you tie bad fortunes, to wish them away, so Sam tied his. I kept mine. (I'll post photos on Flickr tomorrow.)

Then we went to investigate the orange Eiffel Tower, which is called Tokyo Tower (clever!). It's actually a very organized (and kitschy) tourist attraction -- for 700 yen you can take an elevator to the top (if you've ever ridden up the actual Eiffel Tower, you'd be amazed at how smooth and non-scary this ride is). There's an observation deck, where I got a sense of just how crowded Tokyo really is -- in many spots there's not a visible patch of ground, just an insanely dense and chaotic mass of buildings going every which way, as though they just built wherever they could find square footage. I wasn't able to see Mount Fuji -- too overcast -- but I did get a good look at the city.

Halfway down the tower are five floors of attractions, including a minor amusement park with rides for kids; a wax museum (admission was extra, so we skipped it); a Guinness Book of Records museum (bizarre, and we saw a kid getting his picture taken holding the shoe of the world's tallest man. The shoe was about two feet long. The best part was the ads, which were only in Japanese, so we were left to try to guess why the pictured items were record holders -- longest-eared dog? largest sport coat? gorilla with a TV where its face should be? -- because we also skipped that); a cool-looking restaurant with low tables and surrounded by curtains of rice strings; and a cafe that looked like a diner in the States.

We passed up the diner for a crepe stand outside -- the crepes were HUGE and yummy. I got ice cream and blueberry sauce, but if I'd been so inclined I could have gotten tuna with pizza sauce or scrambled eggs and curry. But I was not so inclined.

By the time we got back to Hardy Barracks the reporters were starting to arrive from all over Japan and Korea, and a bunch of us went to dinner at a place called Pizzakaya (if you read the last post, you learned the Japanese word izikaya; this is a play on words. It's really just a very good pizza place). We skipped the Japanese favorite of corn and mayonnaise and had more American choices like pepperoni and four cheese. Awesome pizza. Then we went to a tiny bar called The Cavern, which had framboise (yay!) and really does look like a cavern inside, minus the stalactites and stalagmites. The place could hold about 20 people. It was really laid-back and a good time.

Went to bed around midnight; woke up at 6. I'm amazed I'm functioning. We'll see how well I hold up in the day of meetings that is before me.

My Japanese word for the day: sumimasen (excuse me).