I now officially have two jobs, which is nice, but I've been running since we got back from our trip, so this is the first chance I've had to blog.
Tokyo notes:
*There are VERY LARGE crows there who say "caw" as if taught to crow by humans. It's as if their hearts aren't really in it. "Caw, caw", it almost sounds sarcastic.
*Toyko-ans are a very well groomed lot, and they seem to be big on hats, which is cool with us because Mark enjoys it when I try on hats on our vacations. He thinks I look good in hats. For many of the vacations we've taken together you can find a picture of me trying on a hat
*We went to an interesting temple/cemetary, the Zojoji Temple, in which there where several rows of Jizobosatsu statues, which are the protectors of the souls of still born or otherwise aborted babies. Their parents write messages on tablets that hang near the Jizobosatsu statues; one of the messages was in English, it was a letter to an unborn child from berieved parents, very sad and touching. The statues themselves are dressed in little red bonnets and surrounded with little toy windmills. Some people might find the place very bizarre, personally I thought there was a really beautiful gesture in the whole idea.
*One of my favorite excursions was to Shimo-kitazawa, a really cute and funky neighborhood that took us away from some of the neon overkill of Shinjuku or Ginza (not that we didn't love that). The neighborhood seemed a bit like East Atlanta or Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a bit less expensive than other areas in Tokyo, but still cool and trendy.
*We purchased the new Rufus Wainwright Cd when we were there. I'm really enjoying it. Rufus rocks the house.
Overall, we both really enjoyed ourselves in Tokyo, and found the subway system much easier to negotiate then we expected it to be. Tokyo's well worth seeing if you have the chance. Hopefully we'll get to see more of Japan in the future.

As Marjorie mentioned, we just got back from Tokyo, and boy are our feet tired. We thought we walked a lot in Singapore, but we earned our Urban Hiker merit badges this weekend.

It was a very short trip -- a day traveling, two complete days there, and a day traveling back. It was all we could afford to take off at this point. We never realized before, that it's as far from Singapore to Tokyo as it is from Atlanta to Anchorage, Alaska. When I was living in Atlanta it was inconceivable that we would ever bop up to Anchorage for the weekend, but now that we're so far from everything we've developed an amazing tolerance for spending a day in a plane. What's bad is that we seem perfectly willing to bankrupt ourselves in the process of taking these trips; as soon as we get a few hundred saved up, it seems, we wander over to Travelocity.

We had a teaser visit to Tokyo once before -- a one day stopover two years ago. We coulda shoulda woulda stayed for longer but we were chicken. We loved our one day there, and it wasn't that scary, so we decided to go back, for TWO whole days this time.

ANYway. On the bus ride into town, we oriented ourselves by the Tokyo Tower, which we remembered from last time. It's Tokyo's answer to the Eiffel Tower. We lost sight of it eventually, until we got to our room, open the curtains, and it was RIGHT THERE. Across the street. Crazy.

Our first day was spent figuring out the train system, which we handled pretty well during the trip, as long as we had two brains and sets of eyes working together on it. Many of the signs, quite rudely I must say, didn't even have English translations. We rode out to some of the funkier districts and shopped all day, then had a few Bass Ales (which we had been missing) then tried to find the restaurant in Roppongi that we ate at last time. No luck -- they seem to have moved around the streets and buildings or something. So we just picked a different one at random and had another fantastic meal.

Monday we explored more districts, including the one famous for its "love hotels", that have hourly rates posted. We made a late try for the Imperial Palace only to find that it's closed Mondays. So we just wandered some more, cleaned up, then went out to the Ginza district for dinner. Ended up in "Yakatori Alley" which is lined with small sidewalk eateries serving up fried
veggies and meats and other animal parts. The "pig intestine" was bad enough, but then you read down the menu and see "pig intestine END". We found some safer sounding things to order, and it was all delicious. Much to the amusement of some surrounding customers, Marjorie tried to pay for the meal with about $700 worth of yen. We are lucky the lady was honest!

So mostly it was just random exploring and shopping, but Tokyo is one of those cities where just being there is enough. There's always something to look at or smell or taste or listen to. We even had an exploratory conversation about trying to move there, but I think we really can't afford to make the move right now.

There was a special treat on our final day. We awoke right around sunrise to catch our plane, and when we finally opened the windows, we caught a rare glimpse of Mount Fuji, right through the supports of the Tokyo Tower. It's not often that the air there is clear enough to see it.

We just crawled in, back from Tokyo. We had a terrific time and will definitely write more about it after a decent night's sleep. Tokyo is definitely among the world's most fun (and most expensive) cities.
Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday greetings here and via e-mail. I appreciate it, especially now that we're so far from home.