OK I'm here

I sit here writing this in shin-Shirakawa Japan, drinking an Asahi lager I got from a vending machine on the street. It's currently 5:00 PM local time, 1:00 AM Pacific time. The flight was OK; apparently NW Airlines sucks substantially less on overseas flights. So I arrived at Narita with my boss at 6:00 PM Sunday local time, by which time I had been awake for nearly 24 hrs. Rode the train into Tokyo Station, but didn't have the presence of mind to take any pictures. Took the shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo to Shirakawa, which was probably pretty exciting, but I slept through the whole thing. Checked into the hotel, and promptly dropped into bed. Woke up this morning, had breakfast, and went to work. Once again, no opportunity for pictures. I will have this weekend off, and am planning a bike tour of the city with some co-workers. Until then, here are a couple of pictures from my hotel room:



I'll go into some detail later about the bizarre things like Japanese toilets & mini-cars.