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I may write about our trip to Kyoto, but for the tone of this entry it’s useful to skip to the last few hours on the great island and to another bout of Karaoke. The experience at Karaoke is emblematic of our basic lack of understanding even after 32 days of working and touring there.

This Karaoke-Kan had cool black-light up Caribbean scenes on the wall, which became visible when you started to sing and the regular lights automatically dimmed. There were three remotes, which started us off on the wrong foot. More buttons with kanji characters on them means trouble, always. Even pressing the “door open” button to keep from being body slammed by the very agressive elevator doors was a continual gamble. Somehow I managed to turn the system off before we even made a peep. The guys came in and didn’t seem to think anything was wrong, except that I was singing What a Fool Believes in a terribly high key and with no control over timbre or pitch. While this was happening, one of our lot found out how to press the buttons on the actual console, ignoring the three remoters. She programmed about 10 Michael Jackson songs for herself, and Waterfalls by TLC. It became a performance that I was thoroughly glad to witness, and take part of as Paul McCartney in the two catalog offerings that duo produced. With about 2 hours left until our flight, we escaped the Karaoke place (they are open until at least 6am everywhere) and went for a last spin around the AM-PM convenience store. Having a little skill from the dozen or so late night trips to these places under our belts, we headed straight for the salty and garlicy pretzels and peanut themed snacks. Let me tell you, finding food that does not taste like fish, pork or crab requires a lot of free time, and water to wash it down. The hit of the trip was some bag of banana shaped rice crackers with spicy peanuts. This could be eaten by the handful.