Part of what I forgot to mention about yesterday was that in my searching in Akihabara, I never discovered any big Manga shops. By doing an evening search on the internet, I discovered where to go—but they were closed! So I decided to get up early and take those last few precious hours before leaving to go and check it out.

Arriving more than an hour before they opened, I went back to an already open Yodobashi Camera—where I made the snap decision to buy a new camera! It’s the pocket-sized, latest version of the Sanyo VPC series, and it actually does HD movies—and it was a good deal. Of course, now I need to sell the old one and scrape up some more money to pay it off…

Then the manga shop—Mandarake—then turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, but then I didn’t have a lot of time to check it out thoroughly. It’ll have to be for my next trip…

Then It came time to leave the apartment behind and make my way for the last time to Shinjuku and the Narita Express. That part of the trip was fine and uneventful—but raining, of course, right when I needed to carry all my stuff to the airport. The airport was really nice, since they’ve just re-opened their new facilities after a major renovation. I haven’t been to a more efficiently run airport checkin service since 9/11, and it was refreshing. I made the snap decision to upgrade to Business Class, which I was glad I did (since I had really good food, service and plenty of room with a seat that reclined and had a leg rest—I managed to actually sleep on the plane for a change). Before I’d thought about it, though, I spent some extra money and an extra hour eating lunch at an airport restaurant instead of just making my way directly to the Business Class lounge where I could have snacked for free and had more time to relax and use the wireless internet. Oh well, not for next time…

So then I got home. Dad picked me up at the airport and took me home to an absolutely sweltering Woodland Hills. There has been a record-breaking heat wave here since I left, with only 1 day in the past six weeks where it was below 100 degrees. It was about 106 today, and completely insufferable since I have no air conditioning. That will have to change immediately.

So then—here ends my Japan travel diary. I’m going to switch back to my regular blog and website, where I’ll probably continue to talk about how my visit and study trip to Japan changed me. Check back there over the next little while…

Sayonara…