Cinq semaines à Tokyo

So here we are at the NYK Hikawa Maru. In the 1930s it was a luxury cruise ship. In the 1940s it was a Japanese hospital ship, and then was used to repatriate Japanese soldiers and civilians spread all over the world. Now, it's a Japanese historical monument, and open to tourists. The play pen in the nursery for first class children. The first class dining room. Note another sales opportunity for the makers of plastic food. Up the stairs (still in first class) to the First class sitting room (which, naturally, turned into a ballroom in the evenings). Check out the height of the ceilings. First class smoking room (for when you need to get away from your wife). This first class cabin has two beds and its own sink. Note the artistically folded blankets on them. I think the one in the front is supposed to be a flower, though it looks a little like the inspiration for the poop emoji. Down in the engine rooms under the ship, where Andy tried to convince the ki...

We have stayed in apartments in many countries. Some of them have been bigger. Some have been smaller. Some have had balconies, or patios, or yards. Some have overlooked rivers or railway lines. All of them have had horrible knives. Perhaps the people who offer these apartments never cook or perhaps they think they people who rent these apartments never cook or perhaps they don't want to be responsible for the clean up if someone gets injured by one of their knives. I'm not sure which it is, but the knives are always garbage-y things that you couldn't use to cut a soft boiled egg, which is somewhat of a problem when faced with a chicken that needs quartering or a pound of carrots that need to be turned into cubes. As it turns out, our apartment here suffers from the same problem, and so finding new (and better knives) was high on the list of priorities. And where better to hunt for knives than in Kappabashi, home of plastic food models and cooking supplies? After a ride o...

We are, as you may know, modern type people, and that means that we travel with a plethora of gadgets — phones, tablets, laptops — that are really only happy when provided with internet. And, obviously, being housed by a university in tech forward Japan means that our gadgets are all very happy, with lots and lots of internet available, right? Lots and lots and lots of internet. Except the internet, though provided, is only provided through a single wired connection, which means lots of unhappy phones and tablets, and only one happy laptop at a time. Even worse, one of the laptops only had a European plug, and so it could only be happy for a very short period of time. Clearly, something would have to be done about all of these unhappy objects. But what to do? The world's largest electronics store to the rescue. After a metro ride into Tokyo and a few wrong turns trying to leave the metro station, we found ourselves looking up at a giant electronics store. First floor: phones an...