Sleeping on concrete isn't so easy, even coming from a night on the floor of a cave. And without the sleeping bags we decided to rent at the last second? We would have been completely miserable. So at the first hint of light I started making enough noise to be audible without sounding like a wake-up attempt. Soon we were all awake, laughing at each other as we ...

When you're in a foreign country, you don't question signs as much as you might have if you were at home. You're just so happy to see a sign that makes sense, that you follow it. I don't know if there was anything that should have made us second guess our course, but if there was it might have been wise for us to pay attention to it. ...

I've always hated anime. I never really gave it much of a chance as it combined two things that I didn't care for: cartoons and words I couldn't understand. One night I was at my friend Charlie's house, hanging out in the living room. Someone in his family put on Hayao Miyazaki's anime mastepiece, "Spirited Away". At first I ignored the movie, giving it just a small fraction ...

We were in Yoyogi Park for the Hanami celebration. Then this happened. Catch the killer move at 1:04? These two girls and their very feminine wizard call themselves Bercume, after the all-girl J-pop group they emulate, Perfume. But all they do is dance and lip-sync with ice cream cone microphones? I got a huge kick out of it, but I don't really get it. Then again, if I ...

I couldn't help but think that anyone watching would have exactly the wrong impression of us.  Everyone in Excelsior Caffé was seated and enjoying social drinks.  We were standing for lack of chairs and wolfing down the afterthought sandwiches coffee chains serve straight from the microwave. We were a little behind as usual, heading to Tokyo station to catch our night train.  Our friend Elisia is with ...

What a day. In an effort to totally avoid paying for hotels we have worked out an elaborate system of only taking night trains, where we can sleep as we travel. Today that landed us in Aomori, a small city in Northern Japan. After spending two hours researching things to do there, I had found only one possibility: eat apples. The city is known for having ...

We're going on a pilgrimage. We just realized that our train passes are valid starting today, so we need to take a long trip to start it off. Fourteen hours to the island prefecture of Shikoku sounds about right. In Shikoku there is a traditional 88 temple pilgrimage through the countryside and woods that covers 993 miles. Most people do it in 40-60 days on foot, although others wimp ...

We finally bit the bullet and bought bikes. Not just any bikes, though, hilarious foldable ones. They fold up pretty small and are light enough to carry around. There's a term here, "gaijin smash", which is when a foreigner does something uncustomary or illegal but no one stops them because they're all too polite here. "Gaijin smash" also describes our driving style, pioneered by Todd. We fly around at ...

We saw the Japanese Elvises this Sunday at Yoyogi. They dance all over Tokyo, and apparently the large tattoos are a good indication they're Yakuza -- Japan's equivalent of the mafia. One of 'em sure likes to start trouble. Check it out. Stay tuned for hilarious video of the Japanese pop lip-synchers who performed for our Hanami party.

We were only able to book our last house for three weeks, figuring that we'd find something else once we got here. As our week at the first place ended we scrambled to find somewhere new. It was going to have to be a compromise. In fact, with only a few days left in the house we hadn't come up with anything workable. Then we got an e-mail: Hey guys, So my ...