My blog-posting plans fell a little short of my goal for Japan. I kind of new they would. Oh well. Good thing I don't do this for a living. Anyway, here's a little about our last several days there . . .

Saturday night we had a really nice dinner with the whole family, plus Mitch, Naoko, and a few of their friends. Then Sunday, Mitch, Naoko, C and I took the shinkansen to Nagoya and headed straight to M & N's apartment. We grabbed dinner at Mos Burgers, which is a burger chain in Japan that markets itself as a slightly 'healthier' alternative to MacDonald's. I had a chicken teriyaki sandwich. The trick to Japan and food is the portions are smaller. I left feeling satisfied, but wanting a bit more, which is perfect.

After Mos, We headed over to the Nagoya Dome to watch the Dragons play the Swallows. Baseball in Japan is a pretty cool experience. There are a lot of ritualized chants and cheers. When the home team is up to bat, the chanting begins. They're lead by a really dedicated (volunteer) fan base. I took a bit of video when one of the favorite players stepped up, but I'm having a hard time getting it up on YouTube or Google Video right now. Will keep trying. When the other team bats, the stadium generally falls silent, which is kind of strange. There's no booing or anything. Japan is a positive reinforcement kind of culture, I guess.

The next couple of days we hung out with M & N in and around Nagoya. We saw Inuyama Castle, which is the oldest castle in Japan - with the original structure still in tact - as well as Nagoya Castle. We also did quite a bit of shopping for gifts and souvenirs. Nagoya is a big shopping city. In fact, it reminded us a little bit of Dallas in that regard. We broke down the different cities we saw this way: Tokyo = New York; Kyoto = San Francisco or Seattle; Osaka = Las Vegas; and Nagoya = Dallas. Mitch thinks Osaka is a little more like Chicago in temperament, which is probably true. We were mainly thinking in terms of the bright lights and neon.

As fate would have it, Mitch's apartment is literally next door to a back rehab clinic, so we stepped in to see if we could make an appointment. They were very friendly and the rates were extremely reasonable so I wound up having two sessions - one involving the application of these suctioning electrode doo-dads (I believe that's the technical term) and the other involving a round of acupuncture. Receiving acupuncture from a doctor in Japan who doesn't speak English was one of the more memorable moments of the trip for me. Mitch was there one of the days, and was able to translate. But the other day, he had to work. So Naoko came with me and was able to help a little, but her English is more limited. So we got by through the use of phrase books. The doctor used his to tell me I might feel nauseous and dizzy following the treatment and I should get some rest. I used mine to tell him the needles felt strange in my back, but didn't hurt. Before leaving, we bowed to each other a lot and I told him domo arigato (thank you very much) several times, which is the one Japanese phrase I was able to use expertly, thanks to Styx.

Therapy from the Far East. In the Far East. Can't beat it. The treatments really helped, and actually helped me walk somewhat normally the rest of the week. So that settles it, I'm going to look into acupuncture at home.

We had a great time in Nagoya and many thanks go out to M & N for their hospitality. It made the trip to be able to get a true "local's view" of Japan while we were there.

After leaving Nagoya, we spent one final day in Tokyo, and then it was back to DC - and you've already heard about that.

There's a bit more I want to say on Japan, but will save that for later this week. In the meantime, enjoy this photo gallery of our first several days in Japan. These are all from Tokyo. This will be the first of three or four galleries, probably. Since I took over 800 photos, I need to do some weeding out first so as not to completely bore you.

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