 OK, this is in the gift shop of the ANA Narita Hotel in Tokyo. This is precisely how I've always imagined Japan. |  POCARI SWEAT! Naturally I had to try Japan's popular ION ENERGY DRINK. It tastes a lot like really weak lemon-lime gatorade. |
 This is our early morning flight from Tokyo to Seoul. Note the wife playing on our DS. After this shot, all the pics are from Korea. |  This is the doctor, foster mom and nurse taking Clark through his pre-flight physical at our Wednesday meeting. (L-R): Doctor, Clark, Foster Mom, Nurse |
 I took this cool shot of a sidestreet as we walked down the sidewalk from the agency to the hotel... after a couple blocks I realized that every sidestreet in Seoul looks like this. |  "Hey, you save the coupons?" "Sure, how do you think I got this sweet POCARI SWEAT outdoor lounge set?" |
 I don't intend to poke fun at Korean culture at all here, but there are some great examples of mangled and re-appropriated English to be found. I can't blame them; English is a mess. This You Are Here map shows the "Street of Try to Walk," which I can't imagine is an intentional name. Other clever uses of English: "Tostore," a store that sells toast, and "Sand Presso," offering sandwiches and espresso. |  This was on 24 hours a day, several different players discussing Go strategy. I have to respect that. In other Korean TV news, one night I watched this great action film that had all kinds of amazing live-action Dragon Ball Z-type attacks in it. I'd love to own a dubbed/subtitled version of it, but of course I have no idea what it was called. There was a princess who had two suitors, one the rogue hero and one the goody-goody hero. She accidentally dies during one of their epic clashes when her mean father tries to take down the rogue and hits her instead. Later on, the dad breaks the rogue's arm with a force bubble attack, so he rips off the entire thing right out of the shoulder socket and unleashes some kind of wild blood attack to escape. He ends up taking some farmer's arm to replace his! Then the goody-goody finds a big sword and totally does an InuYasha windscar attack. At the end, the two heroes take down the dad. Awesome. |
 Tourist brochure rack in the hotel lobby. Check out how many of them offer up guided tours to the DMZ! Crazy! |  A hallway covered with video game posters leading down to the game store. |
 The vending machine where I got Jimmied. the pic centers on the Tinker Bell toys we didn't buy, so you can see how cool they are. I do kinda worry about the one where she's stuck in a keyhole though. |  PC Clubs are everywhere, presumably this is where the PC gaming youth of Seoul go to forget to eat for a couple days. This was must be pretty old school... giant posters of Starcraft. |
 This sort of thing fascinates me: a normal everyday cereal aisle at the grocery store (Hapjeung Mart, if you're interested.) There's some familiar Western faces there, but some happy local mascots as well. |  The end of the second and final meeting RE: Clark. That's the foster mom on the left and the new mom on the right. |
 This is me, Clark and Pikachu back in the hotel room. |  And this is Rhonda and Clark checking out downtown. We were in room 809 and we just remembered we left a Poong Poongie kids drink bottle in the hotel room fridge. |
 This is what most of the Tokyo-Detroit flight looked like, one of us walking in circles over by one of the emergency exits. | |