Well, here we are on a beautiful Monday morning looking at a fresh clear sky as we head into winter in Tokyo, a far cry from my cold dark Saturday morning I had at Sobadai-Mae station.

Friday night started well as most Friday nights in Tokyo do, I had a drinking party with colleagues from the office. As my office is 50km’s from home I was very conscious of the train timetable to ensure a safe and timely trip home. Dinner was very civilized at a new Yakiniku (Korean BBQ) restaurant, beers were going down nicely then I made my usual mistake of switching to Japanese Sake….from there it all started going down hill and I think I actually built up momentum on my way down. As it turns out I did make the last train, got all the way to my station, 1 hour north of the party location only to remain asleep and end up 3 stops from where I started. After speaking with the train conductor in my best drunken Japanese I was able to workout where I was and that there where no more trains….. after spending maybe 20 minutes walking around looking for a business hotel I decided to hail a cab and pay the penalty for my indiscretions that night. The only thing I remember of the trip back was watching the meter counting 80 yen for every 7 seconds of travel. Faced with a 3am ETA I knew the fare would be expensive. (see image of taxi bill). Well I guess we all live and learn, maybe I need to do a bit more learning and little less living.

On a brighter note I was happy to see that MAC OS X Leopard goes on sale on the 26th of this month just like the rest of the world, so lookout Yodobashi I will be down this week to get my new OS X Leopard, iLife2008 and possibly a bright shiny new iPod Touch…or maybe I should save the money instead for my next mis-adventure.

For those of you who are unsure how much 18490 yen is, its about USD$160….. about 4 times the price of a good business hotel in the same area.

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