Missed a day or two in there. It's Saturday, by my reckoning. In two days we go to Kyoto.

Still with the late starts. I think I had about one day of feeling good and now I'm back to feeling not that great. Andrew too. Not sure if it's all the walking or something we came with or something we got. In any case, head congestion keeps us slow in the mornings and early to bed.

I think we spent day before yesterday in Shinjuku. First, a good gawk at a new and funky building being built there and then a long tour through a tall camera store. We saw on the street in front of the camera store a coin-operated recharging machine. What a good idea! Why didn't we think of that?

Exhibit 1: "It's so tall and bunlike you could Pakutch it!" Exhibit 2: Device charger. すごい！

We crossed back across the tracks to visit Takashimaya department store, which might be the best department store on the planet. We ate tonkatsu in a top floor restaurant. The bathrooms up there have floor-to-ceiling windows for you to stand in front of to apply make up. On the other side of the building, on the same floor, is a rooftop park. The sky was still clear, though yellowing from the smog, so we were able to get long views of the city skyline. We toured the rest of the store via the escalator core, stopping only at the Kirna Zabete boutique to see what that was like in Tokyo. (Every thing was Tokyo-sized.)

Continuing down to the food basement, where pricey melons preened from fancy wrappers and where every famous purveyor in Japan had a small stall. It was fun to show Andrew all of this, this unimaginable abundance and display.

On to nearby Kinokuniya books for some Japanese language study materials, etc.

Starbucks seems almost as common here as in Seattle so it is easy to maintain the coffee addiction. When I visited in 2000, the stores weren't so ubiquitous: There was one I knew of in Tokyo station area that we would visit. Of course, in Seattle, Starbucks is anathema and the company's reliance on push-button espresso makes the company seem no better or perhaps worse than McDonald's as far as quality goes. But, given that every Starbucks I see here is packed to the gills with people at all hours, and given the superior quality of the coffee of Starbucks here versus any other coffee shop coffee we've tried, including Tullys, I have a new appreciation for the push-button model. This is especially true if the majority of Starbucks's revenue comes from overseas. I don't know if it is true that Starbucks makes more money outside of the United States than inside it, but if it does, then it all makes sense.

Yeah, so, then we stopped at Starbucks, where we crammed into two small seats with our grande caffe mochas and watched yet another gaijin dude with his affect in big display in an attempt to woo a Japanese woman. The scenario is so common and identical that we talked about making it a drinking game.

Bic Camera next. Andrew bought more electronics and I got new headphones. I liked this store the best of all the electronics places so far.

Emerging from Bic Camera we noticed we were totally exhausted and, from that fatigue, energyless for deciding where to eat. Eventually we wandered into Isetan and ate in its "Casual Dining" restaurant in what was called "Eat Paradise." I had dulsot bibimbap (들섯비빔밥), which was labeled カルビビビムバ. The place was a Japanese version of Shari's or Denny's, I guess. Food about the same quality anyhow. Bibimbap was like total comfort food—familiar, filling, and really warm. A good choice for reviving energy. And so, revived, we took the train home and walked back through Shibuya to the apartment where we fell fast asleep. Seriously!

The next morning, we both felt ill and utterly sapped. No amount of nasal spray could stay the congestion and phlegm. You gotta get up anyway (it's our vacation!!), so we did eventually and wandered down to the Ginza area. All the action of the Tsukiji fish market was long over, but we saw some of the funkiness of the fish mongering, so it was still cool. We stopped off at Tsukiji Sushiya for omakase sushi. I don't eat sushi in general (actually, I think I've only eaten sushi when I've been in Japan! ), but I gave it a good go, eating most except the exceptionally large 「かずのこ」or gross-looking「うに」 Sushi seems to be de rigueur among U.S. tech nerds, and sushi restaurants are about as ubiquitous in Seattle as Starbucks stores are in Tokyo. But I'm not a fan and I doubt most of it is that good, particularly some of the fish that wouldn't be as easy to catch in the pacific northwest as it would be in Japan. Eel for example. Andrew reported that the sushi was super fresh, and it seemed so to me too. I can appreciate the subtle flavors and pairings of texture with garnishes. Nobody slathers anything here except when mimicking the way Western food is dressed.

Some Ginza browsing followed. Mostly we stopped at the Mac store and then hoofed it way up to Nihonbashi to Haibara, a paper store. This time, I did all the buying.

It was a lovely cool and calm evening and the business district surrounding Tokyo station wasn't crowded. We strolled along stately buildings and stopped in the International forum for a snack. Then we came back to the apartment to rest before wandering out in search of dinner.

We'd intended to eat tempura, but the place we wanted to try was closed. Almost next door was a burger joint called Pakutch Burger that was crowded and had tantalizing pictures of familar food. We think the "Pakutch" in the name refers to the sound of squishing the tower burgers down to consumble height. Eating there was the right choice: the burgers were good and the heartiness brought back some feeling of health. Who knows why. We think maybe we aren't eating enough somehow and maybe aren't aware of how much we're walking. In any case, it was a good meal.