Advertisement
Published: June 17th 2004
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 12:04:50 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Eric Bram"
Subject: forward to anyone who may want to read
Hello all,
Feel free to delete this message if you don't want to here about my travels because this is all there is in here. I can't get personal with each email so welcome to Generic email #1. With that out of the way...
We're in Tokyo and it really is a magnificent city. Much like New York but at the same time, not. The Japanese people are one of two ways, either very friendly or want nothing to do with foreigners. In America, you see an Asian person, and you assume that they are Americans. Here you see a Caucasian and you assume they are a foreigner.
They also don't accept tips here, so you could imagine the culture shock of walking into a Starbucks and not seeing a tip jar on the counter. That was weird. The people here have a pride in their job. Whatever job they may have, even if it doesn't mean any sort of tip or reward, is priority for them. For example, the guy who took our ticket to get on the airport 
Cherry Blossoms
Japan in Spring
You think people have a lot of cell phones in L.A.. I've seen two year old Aisan kids flipping through their cell. On the subway, people are just doing things on their cell-phone that I could only imagine. I think I need to upgrade my cell phone when I get back in order to feel like I'm a part of the cell phone race. They also have these little doo-hickeys that dangle off their cell phones. It’s a status symbol here for the younger Japanese, much like keychains in the states.
I got a sore throat the day I left and I'm trying to keep it from getting worse by drinking tons of Oujio and downing Echinacia and Vitamin C pills. Fortunately, I'm winning the battle.
It is 4:00am Tokyo time so I haven't gotten used to the time change just yet. In my three days here so far I've tried At LAX
Little did I know what was ahead... raw beef with egg yolk, cow tongue, and have fallen in love with this energy drink called Aquarius. I am constantly fascinated by the 7-11's here because they are filled with exotic foods (to us Americans). I mean where else can you get an octopus with your slurpee. I've seen the Imperial Palace and some park in the heart of Tokyo which was beautiful. But most importantly, they have electric toilets here which are amazing. They do everything. They shoot air freshener, act as a ba-day (sp?), play pleasant music so you don’t have to be worried about other people hearing any type of unintended “plop”. To top it all off, it even has a heated toilet seat. They also have shower rooms and bath tubs that get up to you your neck. I'm amazed how far behind the western world is in the bathroom industry. I think when I get back I will find some investors to help bring the electric toilet to heights reached by such items as the microwave, the computer, and of course the pet rock. We're headed off to Kyoto tomorrow for a couple of days so take care of yourselves and drink gallons of Aquarius in my honor.
Eric Bram
Advertisement
Tot: 0.135s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 8; qc: 66; dbt: 0.0745s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
