2007/09/02 at 16:01

My feet hurt less, though this is mostly due to the fact that I am back at the hostel, sitting on my bed.

I decided to head home early to (a) recuperate, and (b) call some people and generally decompress. Beginning-of-trip stress finally got to me, so I decided to forego any further interactions, and instead struck out alone for the hostel. My dad is still out in Tokyo somewhere, shopping for presents. I'm to wait at the hostel until he comes back. This I can do.

Along the way, I decided I'd try to be clever and divine Japanese pronunciation. To do this, I got a copy of the Tokyo Metro map in both English and Japanese. I'm actually somewhat proud of this feat, actually, because I couldn't find a map in English, so I asked the security guard (?) "Sumimasen. Aigo-ka?", while holding up the Japanese version of the map. While it is almost certainly not a valid sentence, it got the point across. Whee!

So far, I know the following characters: Yama, Tokyo (To-kyo?), Me, Te, Ro, and no. I may also have Naka, but research is still pending. Hey, it's something to do on the train :)

I'm very glad the hostel has Internet, as Internet cafés seem extremely difficult to locate in Japan. Open wireless access points even more so. More research might have to be done in this area.

For now, I think I'll go downstairs and try to make those phone calls, and if I can, upload the journal entries thus far. And get something from a vending machine. There are always vending machines from which goods must be purchased.

[Ed. note: Blogger is being incredibly annoying, and completely ignoring the fact that I'm asking for pages in English, and is instead producing pages in Japanese. This, compounded by the fact that I can't display Japanese characters, makes this a very challenging activity.]