| Union Square Cafe |

Picked up at the airport
March 2

by Michio-san, the director of operations for Wondertable. We speak in English, his halting and mine mushy after a 13-hour flight. On the subject of language: been studying diligently with an audio course I purchased, and have downloaded to my iPod, and I'm slowly acquiring a useful, if somewhat limited vocabulary. It's been a tremendous help, and well worth the strange looks I'd gotten from fellow NYC straphangers who would sidle away cautiously as I would repeat my lessons. So whenever Michio lobs a question that's been covered in the course, I try to answer him in Japanese. This has the interesting effect of triggering a quick conversational re-boot, where he absorbs the answer, realizes it was not in English, forms his answer in Japanese, but then thinks better of it, not wishing to tax my ability, and responds in English. And so we shuffle and bump our way through the traffic, into Tokyo.