From yesterday:

Been taking some pictures. So hopefully you guys will see them. Here, in this room, I can almost forget I'm in Japan. Even looking out the porch, it could be San Francisco. A look in my fridge, however, reveals the truth. I'll try and take some pics of the store I shop at tomorrow. 98% of the stuff I have know idea what it is. A whole row of tofu. Speaking of which, I went to a tofu restaurant today in Umeda. japanese food is so cool. Little bites of sashimi, little cubes of I know not what. Little pickles. A bowl of tofu milk that sits on a flame, and as it comes to a boil, a little film forms on the top of the tofu milk. With a special scoop, you take this film and dunk it into another sauce. There's a special tool and a little sauce for everything, and everything is fun-sized.

Visited with my english teacher Mr Hayashi today. Very intelligent guy. We talked about racial tolerance today, holocausts both Japanese and Jewish, and how to get people to understand them. We talked about this in a fake Vienna cafe where we ate cakes with tiny utensils and cute japanese girls in French maid outfits came and went. This is Japan.

Later, at home, while young Japanese girls dressed in pseudo-hip-hop fashion lip synch theme songs to anime on a show dedicated mostly to cell phones and good ways to use them better I realize that I am here. I am in the shit. Waiting for my mission. Don't let the glitter and the western dress and the cell phones fool you. This is Asia. For every exaggerated similarity, for every fun-sized bit of cute culture, there's something else to balance it out. Something underneath. Only a short time here, but already I can sense it, start to see beneath the bright glare of reflected glamor on the surface to the currents below.