You’re probably worried now that I’ve mentioned that I’m going to be longwinded, since I’m usually longwinded with no warning. But I’m in Tokyo now and since I consider myself a child of Kansai having lived there for five years, I have lots of wicked things to say about this place. I’ll just get them off my chest now.

WHAT A MOTHERF*CKING RUDE SHITHOLE THIS IS. I SHOULD HAVE STAYED IN OSAKA. HOW COME THERE ARE SO MANY TRANSVESTITES WHEREEVER I GO AND WHY DO THEY BUG ME SO MUCH?

I feel better now. I think I broke some of my rules for Japan today, which include:

• Never push anyone out of the way,
• but especially never push anyone older than me out of the way, and
• don’t push any kids out of the way.

I mean, holy hell I wasn’t even in rush hour and there were people EVERYWHERE. All I wanted to do was to get to the proper exit and it was nearly impossible.

My mom and I left the Kawasaki family’s house this morning, headed in opposite directions. She was heading towards western Japan and I was headed to Tokyo. I got some pictures of the Kawasakis before I left. I think they’ll really only make sense to my sister, but here they are. The think is, none of us thought to take any pictures until the last day and here are the pictures I took.

The senior Dr. Kawasaki trying to figure out his camera.

From the left, granddaughter Yuu, granddaughter Kei, my mom, Mrs. Kawasaki, grandson Go, and daughter-in-law whose name I’ve forgotten.

Dr. Kawasaki, eldest daughter Sho and her daughters Kei and Yuu. I don’t think I’ve seen Yuu since she was 1 and she’s 17 now!

Middle child, son Dr. Masaru, his kid Go, his wife whose name has left my brain, and his kid Taku.

In any case I got into my hotel and decided to hang out for a while, take a shower, and probably have dinner at Mos Burger. The room is pretty tiny, but not as small as I had expected, and I took a video of it.

In any case, I was surfing the web in my room when I found out that the Japanese weird USB store that’s always mentioned in Gizmodo was closed on Tuesdays! It was closed the last time I was in Tokyo so I figured I should make the trip to see it today.

The Raremono shop was my first big disappointment of the day, as the main store has even less stuff than the “second” store. I spent some time wandering the smaller stores of Akihabara, looking at electronic parts, and I think I’ve had enough Akihabara geekery for this trip. I even saw some of the people who work at the “maid bars” hanging around, though I didn’t look into going. I honestly don’t see the point.

Anyway, I made it back to Shinjuku, and went on a search for my sister’s final pen, which was a mess. I went across Shinjuku, which was somewhat difficult due to construction, to a store called Tokyu Hands. When I asked about the pen I was told for the third time that they don’t have Itoya Pens. The guy finally confessed that Itoya is the name of a competing stationery store and told me where to find it. I had to go all the way back across Shinjuku to the Odakyu department store which itself was under construction for the year-end sales and the store didn’t have the pen my sister wanted! So I got her STOP READING THIS IF YOU’RE MY SISTER another pen that seems kind of neat and writes well but isn’t exactly what she wanted. Someone will want it, I’m guessing, and I may even keep it even though it’s pink. When you collapse the pen, the tip withdraws, but when you pull it to its fullest length, the pen tip comes out. Neat, huh?

I decided, since THMFIC at the gym wanted me to do bad things, to go wandering around the red light district on the other side of the tracks from my hotel. I got lost and found myself getting asked to enter more and more establishments and finally I decided to ask one of the seedy-looking doormen where the train station was. Turns out I was going in the wrong direction and therefore further into the red-light district. I even had a large Nigerian dude try to pull me into a club, but in general, even heartless Tokyo isn’t all that scary of a place.

I finally had dinner around 8PM at Mos Burger. I thought about eating more Japanese food, but I figured I’m in Tokyo and I’ve always found the food here to be pretty bad. (Yet another bit of Osaka snobbery on my part.) I got a pork cutlet burger and found out you can get it with a salad set! Hooray for Japan.

Tomorrow I’m probably going to try to go to the Tora-san museum. Tora-san is a character from a series of Japanese movies that is in the Guiness Book of World Records as the longest-running movie series and I really like the movies. They’re all kind of the same. Tora-san goes to some part of Japan, falls in love with a local woman, ends up going home to get into an argument with the people there, goes back to where the woman is, but never ends up with her. The museum is located where Tora-san’s home is supposed to be and is in a bad area of town. I was warned by most of the Kawasakis to avoid this foolishness, but I think I’m going anyway. Otoko wa tsuraiyo.