One thing I pretty much forgot about Japan, was how damn cold this country can be.
No, I’m not talking about people, but about the cold it gets in a place without centralized heating and/or proper insulation. Each room in this hotel (and, well, this actually goes for most buildings anyway) has a small air conditioner, but since there’s no thermal insulation of any kind on the windows, the heat loss is quite something.
This also means you won’t have any heating at all in the corridors or bathrooms… that’s probably why they have heated-up toilet seats, to avoid the always obnoxious cases of frozen butts.
What really amazes me is the inability to feel the cold of the average Japanese guy, whom strolls around with a thin jacket like it’s a mild autumn or a mini skirt if female, cause legs can’t feel the cold, can they?
Anyway… you get used to that, it’s just really awkward that one of the most advanced countries does not have a decent solution yet, when it comes to heating.
Yesterday we went out for a quick breakfast in a local small restaurant-kissaten, for the amazement of the locals, since somehow I was able to speak japanese for once. The radio was set on some westerners pop music and we wondered if it was on purpose since they had foreign visitors or just random… it was around 9:30 and while I enjoyed an Earl Grey and a toast, an old lady was eating lunch. Talk about time differences uh?
After procuring ourselves the always nice Suica card (sorry Pasmo, I just love the penguins) we headed out for Shinjuku (by the way, for some odd reason, Suica promptly became “suka” for my friends) to do some shopping. I know, I know, should have gone to Akiba for electronic stuff, but I do actually prefer the big Odakyu Halc (what the hell is an “halc” anyway?) or Yodobashi nearby to the mazes of the electric town. More otaku stuff than anything else there anyway!
Around lunch we were taking some pics to the alley called “Omoide Yokocho” (or “piss alley”, by local drunkards, I guess) and a young girl invited us to her small (no, really, S M A L L) restaurant (like 8 seats… more maybe on the second floor… up that tiny bent staircase…). How could we refuse, it’s totally unpolite! So we ended eating back on the street (and on the damn cold wind).
Yakitori, thank god, could have been much worse (like reba… liver, specialty of another few steps up on the alley). Jokes aside, it was actually really good, even if not exactly cheap for such a “bettola” (italian word for… like… a hole, tiny, dirty and uncomfortable).
This actually is especially true now that euro sucks big time, and 1 = 100 yen. Everything is quite expensive compared to how it “felt” back in 2004, 2005 or even two years ago, when change already started to get bad.
P.S. connection here is fast at times, not even present at other times… so if you don’t see updates, now you know why.
P.P.S. lobby with 5 computers, they all suck. Especially the Mac. Yes, you heard me Apple! 
