June 7, 2001
Thursday

Well, Kayo and I finally made it back to Tokyo!

I didn't get to fly first-class, which was a bit of a bummer. (We were on super-cheap standby, so I guess we're lucky we got on the plane at all...)

And in coach, I met this cool Japanese guitarist (no one famous -- it's coach!) sitting in front of me, and we talked for a long while. He was in Chicago with his girlfriend for a couple weeks. We perused the "band member wanted" ads in his Japanese copy of Guitar, which was cool, and talked about Ochanomizu, the best place to buy guitars in the world.

The rest of the time I spent snoozing uncomfortably (Kayo and I had a whole row of seats to ourselves, at least, so we could kind of "lay" down, almost).

The trip through immigration was painless, our luggage was the first to come out, which was a fantastically fantastic surprise, and we caught a Narita Express (a fast train that runs from Narita to Shinjuku directly) with just a few minutes to spare (so no boring waiting... they run every 30 minutes, by the way, and are far better than a taxi or taking local trains).

By the time we reached Kayo's parents (20 minutes from Shinjuku) we were tired, greasy from layers of damp sweat, and starving beyond all rationality. And you cannot imagine how BADLY I needed to pee, I swear I felt like I was carrying water balloons down there.

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