Done with Tokyo for a bit, we hopped a subway to a train to another train.

(more…)

Upon waking, we opened the curtains of our hotel window and saw…

Mmm… metropolicious. It’s the Ginza district.

(more…)

Look down there! It’s land!

It’s northern Honshu, Japan’s big island.

It’s surprisingly mountainous and unpopulated.

And here we have some farm land, about 100 miles north of Tokyo.

And here’s us. Well, sorta. we’re up near the front of that plane – first class, baby. Don’t fly to Tokyo any other way! It might cost you 250,000 frequent flyer miles to do it, but you’ll appreciate being able to turn your seat into a bed and drink as much free booze as you want – not that you want to start a 14 hour time difference with a hangover… but it’s nice to know you have the option.

So, we started the day at 5:45AM EST, in Raleigh NC. There, I left my wife’s jacket in the car at the airport. We flew to NYC. Then caught a flight that went north up the Hudson River (flying directly over my home town), into Canada, out over the Hudson Bay, across northern Canada, Alaska, the Bering Straight, grazing Kamchatka and finally into Tokyo, Japan – 14 hour flight. I slept a couple hours over Canada, but not much. I love flying too much – I’d rather stare out the window than sleep and miss anything.

When we got there, we found that one of our bags didn’t make the flight – the one with our medicines. Yay! Then another hour train ride to Tokyo from the airport. It was 5:00PM Tokyo time, or 3:00AM EST, before we got to our hotel. Then we stayed up another 4 hours, to try to force ourselves onto Japan time. So, 25 hours of being awake. Whew. What a day.

But, in the morning (Tokyo morning), we were all rested and ready to go. Cause, hey – we were (still are, in fact) in Japan!

Here’s a glacier:

Here’s some sea ice along Alaska’s western coast:

It goes on forever:

Here’s some unidentified island, wrapped in ice, with a few thin clouds overhead:

But how do I know that’s Alaska? This is how:

Soon, we will arrive (8 hours of flight time down, 6 to go).

…it’s just some squiggly thing (a river ? ) … in uninhabited central Alaska.

More squiggly things and a runway of some kind … also in uninhabited central Alaska.

Say, what’s the weather like outside?

Brrr… chilly.

No posting for a week? Something must be going on.

Here’s a hint. This is what I was looking at last Monday morning at 11:00 am:

Recognize that skyline? It’s NYC.

Here’s what I was looking at about 2 hours later.

Recognize that? I know, the clouds make it difficult. Here’s a hint: it’s named after the same guy as that big river that runs around Manhattan island…

It’s the Hudson Bay, partially frozen. It’s in Canada. That’s the 30,000 foot view.

More to come.

This week, we begin with:

1. Radiohead – Planet Telex
2. Replacements – Unsatisfied
3. Lilys – Generator
4. Replacements – Raised In The City
5. Dave Holland Quintet – Shifting Sands
6. Throwing Muses – Portia
7. David Bowie – Velvet Goldmine
8. Rolling Stones – The Spider And The Fly
9. Coctails – It’s All Right
10. Horse Flies – Link Of Chain

No Robyn Hitchcock, Yo La Tengo or Cure! Something big is must be about to happen…

This is too fucking funny.

Man fruit braise the north almond. And don’t you forget it.

Via that somewhat popular blogger, TBogg

Yeah, there has been a lot of pro-war gloating. And I guess that Dawn Olsen’s cautionary advice about gloating is appropriate. So maybe we shouldn’t rub in just how wrong, and morally corrupt the antiwar case was. Maybe we should rise above the temptation to point out that claims of a ‘quagmire’ were wrong — again! — how efforts at moral equivalence were obscenely wrong — again! — how the antiwar folks are still, far too often, trying to move the goalposts rather than admit their error — again — and how an awful lot of the very same people who spoke lugubriously about ‘civilian casualties’ now seem almost disappointed that there weren’t more — again — and how many people who spoke darkly about the Arab Street and citizens rising up against American ‘liberators’ were proven wrong — again — as the liberators were seen as just that by the people they were liberating. And I suppose we shouldn’t stress so much that the antiwar folks were really just defending the interests of French oil companies and Russian arms-deal creditors. It’s probably a bad idea to keep rubbing that point in over and over again.

Nah.

Glenn Reynolds April 11, 2003

Gloat away, dickhead. Slather yourself in blood, rub ash on your face. Dance around the fire like a little warrior. You’ve earned it.