I’ll start with a clean cut-and-paste from the diary I started writing on my beloved Palm, while I had nothing better to do on the plane and while sitting around in airports. On second thoughts, I guess adding things to the ‘raw’ Palm output isn’t going to kill anyone. Here goes…

9Dec2000, Frankfurt airport (transiting)

OK, so I made it out of Romania - they told me I couldn't leave cos I didn't have a transit visa. Wow (how ridiculous). But I do have a multi-entry visitors visa as of 16Dec, and I was only staying in no-man's land for a few hours... They really don't want any more Rom(anian) immigrants here, do they?

All is well now, I've got 4 1/2 hours of waiting ahead of me here. Got a couple of mags of interest (The Economist with feature on Bluetooth & other wireless things and Newsweek with feature on the Daimler-Chrysler “lemon of a merger?” (Andre works at Daimler), and I have the good old Romanian Plai cu Boi, plus Playboy Romanian edition – which is a much better edition than any other I have seen). I should be ok. :-)

I talked to Andre* on the phone, and to my parents (I wanted to share with them my amazement at the transit visa deal). Andre just returned from Tenerife (yeah, I hear you...) and it seems he’s lightly tanned.

Today (yet again) I get a chance to do some seriously international People-Watching.

Moving on, I should call this “Day Two” – but I won’t. It makes more sense to bundle both travel days into one:

10Dec2000

I've now got 2 1/2 hours to touchdown. Nice Japanese guy from Yokohama sitting next to me (sort of, the seat between us is empty, which is cool) said “Welcome to the end of the world!” He's right - we flew over almost 10000 km of Siberia to get here! Thank you for being the first person to welcome me to Japan!

After driving through a 60-kilometre traffic jam for four hours subsequent to landing at Narita, we got to the hotel, a very nice, expensive outfit called the Takanawa Prince Hotel – Sakura Tower. Twenty minutes later, I'm meeting Chizuru, the friend of a friend, a very friendly Japanese woman who was to show me around Tokyo a little bit that evening. She is a Violist.

Wow! What a Tokyo evening I had after that! First I went to vote.

Just in case you know nothing of the recent Romanian elections (December 2000), here's a brief background: we had elections at the end of November, and the two partial winners were the old ex-communist Ion Iliescu (who had been president of Romania before, after the 1989 changeover from Communism) and the new extremist (and, many would say, lunatic; others believe he is ‘the one’ to set things right) Corneliu Vadim Tudor. On December the 13th we had the run-off elections between these two. As is most often the case with politics, one has to choose between the lesser of the two evils, which is not something Romanians are fully comfortable with yet.

I paid my visit to the Romanian Embassy to Japan and cast my vote like a truly conscientious citizen. I was the 67^th person to do so that Sunday.

This is where my Palm notes become sketchy, so I had to write up most of the text below at home:

Then Chizu took me to see Roppongi, considered to be the trendiest area of Tokyo – full of shops and clubs and bars and restaurants and people! Lots and lots of people there at 8pm, at 10pm and at 12am. Around Roppongi we started looking for a traditional Japanese noodle shop/restaurant. We found a Hard Rock Café, an Italian Pizza restaurant, a Thai Restaurant and Chinese shops next door to some burger joint.

Anyway, we finally found a noodle place but it was closed. So we kept on going down Roppongi Avenue and got to a place which I couldn’t tell what it was. Chizu said, “Look, what do you think of this?” Ermm… “Nice, wooden stairs going down to a basement,” I replied. Of course, everything on the firm outside, the menu on the small blackboard was in Japanese. She decided we should try it. Boy, am I happy she made that decision! It was the most wonderful Japanese restaurant I’ve ever been to! True, I haven’t been to more than five, but Chizu said the same thing, that it was the nicest traditional restaurant she’d ever been to. So there. (Do click on the link above to see the website; I know it’s all in Japanese, but look at the pictures, you’ll get an idea. You can navigate by looking at the actual URL as displayed by the browser when you slide the mouse cursor over the links. The link to the actual restaurant – which is part of a small chain or restaurants, it would seem – is here.)

You go down these stairs and hit an iron door that opens from the floor to about my chest-height, and you have to bow down to get in. (Probably so that they can chop your head off if they don’t like you! ;-) From then on you’re in rural Japan: antique Japanese furniture, traditional food recipes, traditional music and exceptionally hospitable and polite staff. What an introduction!

Click on to Days Two, Three and Four: the GDN Conference…