It’s about 5:35AM in Portland right now, which isn’t too terribly early but I’ve been up since 7AM yesterday. It’s only about 9:35PM in Shinagawa and I’m about to fall over. I’m here alone this year and I had a bunch of “errands” to run when I got to Tokyo. Some I always go – pick up my rail pass, get SIM card for my phone, etc. But I also had to pick up a SIM card that I had delivered to a convenience store (something you can do in Japan), get all my train tickets since I was traveling a lot on the front end of the trip, and mail some gift packages so I didn’t have to lug them around the whole trip.

The trip started out weird too. A Nike guy I know was on my flight and so was my old high school classmate Jim Skinner. And I gave up my aisle seat so a girl could sit with her mom – they were on their way back to Guam and of course they knew Ric Blas the judoka!

So I better call this quits before I stay up way too late. I have to get up early and get the heck out of Dodge (to see my cousin and her new granddaughter!)