Stepped out of the kingdom for a week...

Sorry for the hiatus, but I was in the land of the rising son for eight days. Yep, I was in Japan. I've been wanting to go there forever, but I knew it was outrageously expensive, so I was waiting for someone to send me there instead. My wish finally came true. I was sent there.

My dad lived in Misawa, Japan for a year back in the 50s and doesn't have fond memories of that cold country. Even though I too went in winter, I found the Japan of 2012 to be rather hot, especially in comparison to China. In Japan everything is heated. Over-heated. Even some toilet seats are heated. That's just over the top. Yet nice.

With Chinese New Year coming up in less than one week, I don't have time to delve into Japan in great detail right now. So I'll just hit upon some highlights.

• It is clean.
• Looks like most things were built 20-30 years ago (yet they are very clean).
• Bathrooms are so clean you could set your purse on the floor and probably not get germs on it. Enough about cleanliness.
• I didn't see much poverty. I saw some homeless men in the parks though.
• It is über-stylish in Japan. 
• In Tokyo, everyone wears black and grey, with textures like tweed and suede, as in business suits and such. It looks awesome. (I wore blue jeans and tennis shoes, and still was in great pain after walking through Tokyo for days on end. I would have liked to have been more stylish, but we have to be practical when we get to a certain age, right?)
• Highways are not landscaped as they are in China. For example, in Shanghai even the overpasses have rows of colorful flowers decorating the sides of them. Tokyo was more austere looking in terms of landscaping.
• Tokyo may be the largest city in the world, but it is not the most crowded. I found the lack of people alarming after being in the over-populated Middle Kingdom for so long.
• Outrageously expensive. A KFC chicken burger cost me US$6 in Tokyo. In China it is only something like $2 for the same thing.
• Excellent Mexican food in Tokyo at El Torito.
• Krispy Kreme is everywhere in Tokyo. The original donut costs $2 each.
• It cost me $6.50 for a tall soy latte at Starbucks in Japan. In China the same thing costs $4.44. In America it is probably way cheaper. 
• The toilets in Japan are all plugged in to electrical outlets (I guess that accounts for heating the seats). They have arms on the side of the toilet with lots of buttons on them, almost none of which are translated into English. One toilet had 23 different buttons to push. I was scared to push any of them, as I was afraid of sounding off an alarm. Then I noticed that one button was translated into English, the flush button. Okay, not another word about bathrooms.
• People in Japan are polite and don't push and shove on public transportation. 
• The level of English in Japan is pretty low compared to other countries like China.
• Japan has snow-capped volcanoes. I woke up one morning in Tokyo and saw Mt. Fuji from my hotel window. It wasn't there the day before. Well, I couldn't see it the day before anyway, due to clouds. I'm pretty sure it was there though.

Well, that's my recap. I was greeted back to the Middle Kingdom by a happy Pekingese who did flips and licked my nose. Life is good.