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Lunch today was a trip to the local soba shop, only a block from Nintendo and strangely uncrowded for a being what looks like the only restaurant within walking distance. I wonder if most of the employees eat at the cafeteria or from the local convenience stores (both of which looked as crowded as the soba restaurant did). We ate tenzaru soba, with rice and pickles, and when the meal was finished, our server brought a teapot filled with the soba water, which we then were meant to pour into the soba dipping sauce (whose name escapes me, and I’m writing this note to remind myself to look it up, which means if this note is still in here, I got lazy and just pressed publish without doing so). The soba broth apparently holds more nutrients than even the soba itself, and many sang of its benefits to skin, cholesterol levels, cancer prevention, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and so on.

The real gem, however, came after lunch, when we stopped in at a local 7-Eleven to pick up drinks to sustain us through the jet lag that was only just beginning to knock us on our asses. Nescafe sells a canned coffee drink branded with the image of Golgo 13, legendary assassin of the manga of the same name. I’ll post an image later when I get a chance, because it turns out I was too lazy to finish this post properly… Ah, well. Blame jet lag if you must blame something.

Off to Kyoto for a business trip. The business-class experience of travel is still weird to me, like I’m in an entirely separate airport, a phantom airport superimposed over the one I’m used to wandering through. Meals are expensed, the lounge seats are quite and comfortable, and I’m not constantly watching my bags out of fear that something will happen to them. Tim’s on his second glass of (complimentary) Jameson, taking full advantage of the amenities, while I’m stocking up on free bagels and packets of cream cheese–my feral coach-class roots are showing, and I’m hoarding food out of fear that I’ll never see an attendant once the flight begins. I think I might have snarled at a guy who got too close to my snack cache.

I’ve been in the habit lately of emptying the various contents of my brain either on twitter or into e-mails directed at my friends, and that’s not really doing anything but cluttering the internet, irritating said friends, and possibly pushing us closer to the coming infopocalypse. In all honesty, it’s mostly because, when I write to my friends or on Twitter, I know the audience, and when I write here, it’s all imaginary and hypothetical, that audience. I get all stuffy and don’t know how to explain myself. But it’s time to get over that, so I figured I’d better do my part and move the conversation here, where it can and should be safely ignored.
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