Time for a quick inventory:

• It’s Friday night Saturday morning,
• I’ve had three four glasses of wine,
• I (finally) beat Halo 3, and
• I am now leafing through Tokyo tour books.

My life is the stuff of legend, folks. Allan Quatermain never had it this good.

Anyway. By way of explainin’ that last bullet point, I’m apparently leaving for Tokyo in—christ, three weeks from today.

Damn. Still feels a little surreal to even type it.

At any rate, I’ll be flying to Japan to attend Tokyo Designer’s Week, and then do a bit of traveling about the country. The kicker is that my command of the language is much limited to “Zatōichi,” “Kurosawa,” and “unagi“…so to say that I’m “slightly freaked out” isn’t just a disservice to people currently in a state of freak-outage; rather, it’s a DEFCON 2-level failure of the English language. My friend and traveling companion, Catherine, put it best when composing her itinerary for the trip:

To-do list: Do not headbutt dudes by trying to bow. Do not walk around accidentally wearing the go-to-the-bathroom slippers. Don’t be naked in the wrong place. Don’t accidentally insult someone’s mom.

More likely to-do list: The opposite of that last list.

So. If any of you have any advice of things to do, places to see, and/or advice for Stupid Americans Traveling Abroad^™ like myself, I’d appreciate it.

I might even bring you back a tacky travel magnet. Because I’m just that awesome.