Sayonara Tokyo

So I totally realize my pattern here. I get to a country, have a few bobbles and decide I don't like it. Then I spend a few more days making a fool of myself and learn to really love it. Tokyo has been awesome and I can't wait to come back. I could never live here without some serious language help, but it's a great city.

Some of my final lessons are:

• you learn to appreciate the small electronic wonders they have here. My personal favorites (aside from the earlier post about the toilet seat) are the speaker for the TV in the restroom, the motion detector that unlocks doors, the urinal that gives you a little "welcome flush" to get the juices flowing, and the TV screens in the subway that play wacky Japanese commercials (and also English lessons).
• very famous people from the US do TV commercials here. Isn't that supposed to kill your career?
• the city was designed to be hard to get around on purpose. It was a defense mechanism against intruders trying to attack the castle. At least that will be my excuse for never knowing where I am.
• the Japanese love to talk about Japanese culture. The summary is, everyone must be meek and mild (mostly the women), you can never say 'no' to anything, always walk on the left (if you walk on the right it's like a fish trying to swim up stream), and women are worthless to society.
• these people know how to dress! And everyone is skinny. If I moved here, I would become very average in that regard. And the guys have enviable 'bed head' ... man I wish I could do that.

With that, I'm heading back to Hong Kong in a few hours. My apartment will have been cleaned twice without me ever being there, so it should be spotless. All my food will be rotten, so it's another trip to The Great! Now to figure out plans for the weekend ...