Jet Setter

Kevin is in Japan on a business trip. He's staying right outside Tokyo, and despite the jet lag, he is really enjoying his time there. Here are some excerpts from emails he has sent me over the past couple days:

DAY 1
The hotel he and his co workers are staying is very nice. King sized bed, great service. However...

The bathroom is the craziest part of all, especially the toilet. See the attached picture. I tried out some of the settings and couldn't really tell the difference between the one that sprayed your butt and the other one. Although the water was really warm...The seat also has a warmer too. I suppose its nice, but it all struck me as extremely unnecessary. [My coworker] said that the Western style toilets are all like that. If they aren't, then they are Japanese style, which is basically a hole in the ground. I guess I will stick with the bells and whistles in that case.



DAY 2
We walked over to the office through the subway station. It was rush hour and it was crazy. There were thousands of people, but everyone looked the same and no one talked. Every was walking and focused on where they were going. The only sound in the station was footsteps. The Tokyo area is not very diverse. The few white people you see stick out from a mile away. Everything is pretty built up. Most of the 10 min walk to the office was outside, but under covered walkways. I guess that is good because it was sort of raining this morning...I had a traditional Japanese lunch with sushi, rice, meso soup, and tea. It was ok, but I don't really enjoy sushi. I don't find it gross, but don't really like it either. It was tuna I think. I did ok with chopsticks. The afternoon was ok, but I started hitting the wall around 4pm, then we worked until almost 7pm. We ate dinner at a restaurant that was in an underground shopping area underneath the building. They always give us a hard time about the large size of American dinners, but my dinner was huge. I'm not really sure what it was, but I think it was a kind of like pork tempura with rice, meso soup, cabbage, and some kind of sprouts. I didn't eat all of it and they were giving me a hard time. Plus they ordered me a second beer which I didn't need. So by the time we got back to the hotel, I wanted to crawl into bed.

But instead I went across to the street to check something out because I thought a saw on a map that the building across from us was a church. It is pretty crazy because less than 1% of the country is Catholic but it just happens to be a Catholic church directly across the street from my hotel. Not only that, but they have mass at 7am. So I am going to try to go to Mass there tomorrow. If not tomorrow, at least one day. I would like to get to mass as it is, but it would be especially cool to go in Japan. I have been to Spanish masses and at least understood some things, but this will be totally foreign. At least I have the Magnificat for the readings. So I should get to bed soon, if I want to get up for that.

Here is a picture I took today from the hotel. You can see Tokyo Tower. It is a similar design and size to the Eiffel Tower, except more modern.

Monica and I miss you, Kev!