Okay I lied. It was an eleven-hour flight

I imagined when I arrived in Tokyo it would be as if I'd suddenly been dropped down on another planet. I'd find myself in a very foreign place where everything looked, smelled and sounded strange. Where no one understood me and I understood no one. Where I was always lost. In translation. HAHA. Let's get that cliched reference out of the way right now.

But I wanted that.

I love that feeling of suddenly being in a place that makes me think, "We're not in Kansas anymore."

Tokyo, after four days, is surprisingly not that place. Tokyo is clean and civilized and polite. Almost all directional signs are in Japanese and English. The notoriously "difficult" Tokyo subway system is actually quite similar to that of New York - and possibly easier to use because everything is color-coded and numbered, so even an illiterate, unless he suffered from color-blindness, could easily find his way around.

And everywhere you notice how clean it is. Ironically, I walked for ten blocks today with an empty coffee cup before I finally saw a trash receptacle. Where do they put their trash? This is really a mystery to me.

It's not that I don't like it here. The narrow streets around Shinjuku are very atmospheric. The two major Shinto temples, Meiji-jingu and Senso-ji, are amazing - and so different from Southeast Asian buddhist temples... so much wood and symmetry. Japanese men can be strikingly beautiful. The food is excellent, and it's also familiar: sushi, sashimi, teriyaki, tempura, yakitori, udon, soba.

And people generally seem quite happy. I've seen lots of smiles. I'm suspecting this could be related to the perky ice-cream truck jingle that plays each time the subway doors open. Can you imagine how something like that would go over in New York??

But I don't want to see another Starbucks or Banana Republic (Ever. Anywhere). I'm just wanting to be more... excited, I guess. And maybe moved.