I realized this last week that I’ve been playing a very dangerous game, by attending the Police Citizens Academy each week. Particularly, by driving and parking my car there, at Police HQ. I’d heard about the law that gives new residents up to thirty days to get their Washington drivers license, and I’d taken care of that weeks ago. But apparently it’s also necessary to get Washington plates within that same timeframe. In either case, my current registration is months out of date. It’s only a matter of time before the jig is up. At least my habit of backing in to parking spaces is paying off.

On Sunday we had ward council. It’s interesting going to those out here. I’ve been in ward council meetings back in Provo, but there was never a missionary presence. Having the sister missionaries here brought me back to how it was in Australia, putting together progress preports, coordinating with the Ward Mission Leader, filling in meal calendars, good times.

And that’s about all there was for this week. Till next time!

Oh, right, yeah there was this whole Tokyo thing. Better say a bit about that.

So I had planned on doing some work at my office the morning of my flight, then playing fast and loose with traffic to make it to the airport on time for my 1pm flight. But since there was a weather-related power outage that day, I ended up heading to the airport way earlier than I usually do, lining up with the recommended “2 hours ahead of schedule”. On the shuttle over I met this group heading to Texas for a “roller derby”, where they basically do laps around a track on roller skates while playing full-body-contact keep-away. One of the contenders was from Australia, and I mentioned I’d spent some time there. “Oh, why’d you spend time there?” “Well I was a missionary for my church, wanna hear all about it?” “Absolutely, sign me up for baptism.” Well, I’m sure that’s how it would’ve gone, except he never asked why I was there. So that nascent missionary opportunity never came to term.

On the flight to LAX I sat next to a really bubbly girl who was good friends with some marketing executive at Google. She sent an email to him introducing me, because “it’s all about networking these days.” Well, I do appreciate her efforts, but the promotion committee wouldn’t give two hoots if I knew Larry Page himself.

At LAX I found a quiet corner and practiced my presentation with my advisor over the phone. I had at least couple hours until the flight over to Japan. After I practiced and browsed around for a bit, I decided to wander over and check out the gate. I still had an hour or so left, and it was only about 500 feet from the gate where I’d arrived, but just in case. Checked the departure board on the way; yep, same gave number as before; status: a big all-caps BOARDING.

I think the rule about connecting flights is, don’t guess at times, ever ever ever ever ever. Probably didn’t have enough ‘ever’s memorized. It was a couple days before I was over the shakes of almost missing that flight.

I guess I’m just not blessed with the ability to sleep on long flights. Even with Ambien, it was a no-go. Of course it was only on the way off that I noticed that they’d included a set of ear plugs and a sleeping mask in our seat pockets. Really felt like that guy on the cruise who only ate crackers.

It was only after I landed in Tokyo that I realized, after I’d replaced my regular socks with compression socks, that I’d placed my regulars in a disposable bag that I’d gone ahead and… disposed of. Well, shucky darn.

It was very late when I arrived. Before allowing us through customs they had us walk past a thermal camera, to detect whether we were showing flu symptoms.

I made my way to the hotel via subway. The cars made an interesting sound when they started moving, I think like the Vulture Terran unit from Starcraft.

The intersections on the surface were eerily quiet. No crossing indicator sounds. Later I learned that it was only in some locations where there were no sounds, though I never figured out what made the difference.

I was feeling kind of nervous then; while all the advice I’d heard stated that US plugs work just fine in Japan, what I didn’t catch on to was that they only work for two-prong plugs. Ground pins don’t fit. Which was going to be a problem for me if I couldn’t charge my laptop. While rummaging around in my backpack for an unrelated reason, I happened across a two-prong Apple charging adapter, which has stayed compatible across models ever since at least 2007. Nice.

The next day I set out on an hour-and-a-half walk towards church. Figured it’d be a great way to see the city.

Traditional Japanese food is great and all, but sometimes it’s nice just to have some good old-fashioned American Mickey-dees.

That night I met up with a group who was traveling from BYU. Their professor was rather flush with cash from grants, and so while their paper hadn’t been accepted to the conference, they traveled anyways. Which was great, would’ve been not nearly as fun without them to hang with.

The next morning, after seeing the hotel’s sad excuse for a sausage and eggs breakfast, I headed to the convenience store next door, where I didn’t fare much better. Couldn’t read anything, so I picked out something that looked like it was made of meat, but ended up just being rice wrapped in some kind of sweetened sheet of… stuff. At least it was filling.

That evening we headed out to visit Akihabara, otaku central. Games, anime, electronics galore.

We headed back from Akihabara to a hotel near the conference venue, where they had a great dinner planned.

The next morning I set off to Tokyo Station to grab tickets for the bullet train, headed for Kyoto, several hundred miles away. I’d heard great things about it from the person I’d sat next to on the plane ride over, so I figured I’d spend a day there after the conference.

For lunch a couple of us went off in search of authentic ramen.

That night we went to Shibuya Crossing, the busiest crosswalk in the world.

I had to part ways with most of the BYU people at that time. A couple of them were staying through the rest of the weekend, so we went off to find some more sights to see.

Next morning I was bound for Kyoto.

My last day I visited five places: the fish market, one of Tokyo’s large parks, Google’s Tokyo office, a massive graveyard, and a museum.

Then it was time to grab my luggage and haul it off to the airport. I really hadn’t noticed how few elevators there were to the surface from subway stations, until I had to haul my heavy suitcase up several flights. These stations were deep – three escalators and two flights of stairs, in some cases.

And now I’m back. Still dealing with a weird sleep schedule, but I should adjust by tomorrow, if last week was any indication.