Okay, does anyone know how to deal with frizzy hair in a humid climate? It's around 70-80% humidity everyday, and I look like I stuck my finger in a freaking light socket.

Oh, what I wouldn't give for silky-straight hair right now . . .

Pardon my silence over the last several days, but it's been a tad hectic over here.

Somehow we've managed to survive for nearly two weeks with little to no Japanese skills, something I consider to be a miracle. We've managed to obtain food and shelter using a smattering of hand signals and simple words, and thankfully no one has yet bludgeoned me to death for my hideously poor Japanese.

We even travelled with our huge bags by train, during rush hour, from Yokohama to Tokyo. (I think walking around with a sign that says GAIJIN would be simpler.)

But we've also had some really good times, and taken lots of pictures. When I can get access to a more reliable computer, I'll be able to post some of the pictures.

For now, back to the grindstone for me!

Welcome to the Japanese rainy season! The temperatures are the same, but now featuring 88% humidity!

I thought the heat was bad before . . .

I never thought that the air inside of an office building would be hotter than the air outside.

It's hot and humid here, but it's absolutely excruciating inside the office building I'm in. Going down to the cafeteria was like decending into the pits of Hell. But I think Hell is less humid.

Everyone somehow manages to look cool and civilized at lunch while I melt into a puddle of goo in the 30 degree heat. My painstakingly blow-dried hair has now turned fuzzy, and my makeup, if it hasn't melted down to my ankles, has developed a glossy sheen usually reserved for plastic dolls.

Yuck.

So after travelling for approximately 13 hours in total (including the stop-over in Vancouver), we finally arrived at the Narita airport.

After we disembarked and were questioned about our health condition (what with the whole SARS thing), we made our way towards customs. At that point, we were on the other side of the airport, and it was then that we realized that F-No had left his jacket on the plane. Some 45 minutes later, we managed to get it back.

When we passed through customs, we went to get our bags from the ANA desk. There's one bag . . . two . . . wait, where's the third one? Yep, sure enough, the biggest bag, the bag with all the toilettries, most of the clothes and essentials had gone AWOL.

It was about this time that I started hyperventilating. My uncle was going to meet us at the airport, but I had no idea where. Add to that the fact that we were at least an hour late, and things were starting to look pretty hairy. When I finally managed to figure out his cellphone number, there was no answer.

ANA said that they would try to track down our bag, but it was possible that someone had taken it by accident. Oh great. So someone could be off selling my worldly possessions on ebay, and I would be none the wiser. Thanks. I'm going to go commit seppuku now.

But just when things looked their bleakest, I finally managed to get a hold of my uncle who came to retrieve us from the airport. We found our hotel, the airline left a message saying our bag was on its way to our hotel, and the day was saved.

After being awake for 36 hours and dining with my aunt and uncle at a Japanese pub, we finally collapsed at 8:30 in the evening. More adventure than I really counted on, but hey, that's what this trip is all about, after all!

Oh my god, I'm blogging from Japan!!!!

I've reached a level of exhaustion that now involves nausea. This is so gross.

Apparently you can die from exhaustion, but I think I'm at least 28 hours away from that.

I'm so tired.

My eyes are turning into raisins because somehow I completely lack the capacity to not stay up all night the night before a big trip. My stupidity knows no bounds.

Inspired by eol and the thing that turned up in my lunch today, I present:

Nameless Japanese Jelly Snak

Recently, although I've lived on my own for many years now, my mother has decided that nothing would delight her more than feeding F-No and I. Busy zookeepers that we are, this turned out to be a swanky arrangement.

In today's lunch, there was a little plastic cup containing a gelatinous mass surrounding a darker mass.

As it turns out, the gelatinous mass is sweetened konnyaku, a rubbery substance made from the "starch of a yamlike tuber". It has little to no flavour of its own, and has the texture of very concentrated Jell-O.

The dark mass is sweet azuki bean paste, found in many Asian snacks and desserts. Together, it makes for a strange but pleasant concoction.

Should you at some point come across this snack, I suggest you use a fork, as the konnyaku will not readily yield to utensils.

The way I had it arranged wasn't working so great, so try this instead:

Countdown to Japan

Aaaaaaaand . . . it's broken. Crap.

Or not??? Geez. Well, if the script doesn't seem to be cooperating, refresh a few times and that ought to sort things out.

For those of us who have nothing better to do, I've inserted a handy dandy countdown clock at the bottom of the page. I would have put it in a post, but something about it completely screwed up the formatting of the page, so now it sits in a place where it can't cause much trouble.

Extra speshul thanks to The Don who very kindly sent me a link to a countdown java applet. Unfortunately I couldn't get the applet to work, so I had to use a different one.

Now you may bask in the glory of the javascript. And even get it for yourself here.

Does anyone know where I can find an easily customizable countdown clock? Nothing fancy, just a countdown.

It's now 4 days and some-odd hours until we depart for Japan. My head is spinning and my list of things to do keeps getting longer instead of shorter. I would like a little countdown as a reminder that my misery is temporary, and that I will soon be on a plane where everything I forgot doesn't matter anymore.

Ugh.