It’s 3:00 AM in Tokyo…

and it’s so quiet, it’s almost spooky. I can hear crickets outside my window, with only the occasional siren to break the quiet. Tokyo is by far the quietest city I’ve ever visited. Just walking down the street during the day, nobody is talking on their phones, nobody is having a too-loud conversation with their friend. There are tons of people, but they all move with a purpose and a very deliberate courtesy. I’ll get one thing out of the way right away: it’s hot as balls here. Not quite as bad as Famously Hot™ Columbia, but pretty close. And some of the subway cars don’t have AC, which makes for a lot of flop sweat after a stop or two. I thought I had the jet-lag issue almost licked, until I snapped wide-awake at 1:30 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep. Tomorrow (today) we’ll head out into the sun for a while to try to get our circadian rhythms back on track. We’re staying in an apartment near the Shin Ōkubo station, in Shinjuku. Note that it’s Shin Ōkubo, not Shin Okubo. The O is long. Very long. When I was trying to make sure I was about to get on the right train I was confusing the poor transit policeman with my pronunciation. When he finally figured out what I was asking he was like “Oh, Shin Oooooooookubo.” Lesson learned. The pic with this post is of the crowds just outside the station as we were walking back. It’s a very, very busy area with a lot of shops and food stalls nearby. There’s a fried-cheese-on-a-stick place about a block from the apartment which we haven’t gotten to try yet, because there’s always a huge line outside. Sorry about the poor quality/lack of aesthetic value of the pic, I haven’t gotten access to Selene’s photos yet. When I do I promise that the quality of these posts will increase dramatically 🙂