I thought it would be hard to wake up at 4 am to go to the fish market. I hadn't accounted for the wonders of jet lag. I opened my eyes at 2:30 am Monday morning. I tried to get them to close again for another half-hour and then decided I might as well get up. I took a shower, did some stretches and, since we were checking out later that morning, packed my bag. Still had time to spare for our 4:30 am departure. We took a cab to to an intersection near the fish market in Tokyo and walked a half-mile or so to where the auctions took place. Still dark, the various vendors setting up their stores, the workers zipping around on their motorized flat-bed carts - I understood that this was another world. A microcosm where everybody seemed to have a function, performed with fluid precision, and we were the strange foreign bits that bumped and bumbled our way through its arteries.

We were one of the first of the bystanders to show up at the auction area. There were large frozen tunas spread out on the floor of a warehouse and men were numbering them and cutting their tales open so the meat could be analyzed. The scene was pretty barbaric - nightmarish, even - if you happened to be a tuna. After a half-hour or so, the auctions began. A man stood on a stool and clanged a bell loudly in the air. The clanging got louder and more frantic until it stopped suddenly as the bell was clapped decisively on the ground. Then the man bowed and began chanting and doing a kind of strange auction dance. I shot some video, because it's something you just have to see and hear for yourself.

Still very early, we rode an eerily silent metro back to the hotel and ate breakfast. We checked out around nine and went on our way to Hakone with Ian's friend Endo-san. There, we stayed at a traditional ryokan and ate elaborate traditional Japanese meals and took dips in the communal hot spring baths, or onsen. Maybe it was just the fact that we'd been to the fish auction earlier that morning, but it seemed like the entire ryokan smelled like fish. Also, I was continually made aware that my height was . . . above average. For instance, when I stood at the mirror in the dressing room, my head was chopped off. The sink came to just above my knee. I had to bend through doorways. And there was not one pair of slippers I put on in which my heal did not rest flatly on the ground. I felt like a giant. Despite the fishy smell, and the fact that I felt like a guest in the home of Bilbo Baggins, the ryokan was an incredible, and truly authentic, experience. Many thanks to Endo-san for making it possible.

While in Hakone, we visited the Open Air Art Museum, which has been my personal highlight of the trip, so far. The museum features an incredible sculpture garden that puts the Hirshhorn's to shame, as well as a great collection of lesser-known Picasso's, including several interesting clay plate-ware pieces he had done in the 50's. I snapped several pics including this and this.

My fear of heights was tested as we rode the Hakone Ropeway, the longest gondola ride in Japan (33 minutes), across the Owakundani Gorge (Great Boiling Valley), where our little cable car was engulfed by sulfuric fumes.

Monday night at the ryokan, we all retired early to our gender-segregated rooms where our floor mats had been set out and made for us. I'll say this: vacationing with C's family is an athletic experience which requires strength and conditioning. You rise early, play hard, and struggle to stay awake through dinner. Then you get up the next day and do it all over again. It's great fun.

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