Red Eye

Caught the red eye from Chiang Mai to Seoul, got into Incheon before dawn, and then at 8 am I got on a 2 hr puddle jumper to Narita. Arrived in Tokyo bedraggled and cramped, unexpectedly shivering and unprepared for the last vestiges of winter that I really should have seen coming. The winds caught me off guard and reminded me of why I got out of Chicago after a dozen years of hibernating for 6 months every November. Thailand's spoiling me with sun all year round. Jumped in a limo bus and took a long, winding ride till I was finally deposited in Shinagawa at my hotel.
I wanted to sleep today, but I had work to do, things to finish before the conference starts tomorrow, and countless e-mails to send that I should've finished weeks ago. Sigh. No rest for the wicked. Met up with old friends and briefly wandered through the lovely sculptured garden tucked away behind the hotel. Still the anxiety looms. This is going to be a marathon work week, and the scope of it could wreak havoc on me if I wasn't prepared. I'm probably not prepared, to tell the truth. But that's never stopped me before! The beautiful thing about having your back up against a wall is that you have no choice but to deliver. Sometimes getting rid of the inner dialogue does wonders for your work ethic....

I'll leave you with my first impression of Japan. This was next to the toilet in my bathroom, the Toto Washlet. You've got to hand it to people who've used their ingenious tech-savvy minds to design heated crappers with rotating bidet nozzles that clean off your nether regions with carefully targeted streams of water. I wonder how many engineers it took to craft this marvel of modern technology...