This is probably obvious by now, but I’m pretty much without a computer or internet connection here in Tokyo, so I probably won’t be posting much, if anything, until after the new year. Hopefully the United States doesn’t go totalitarian before I get back.

By the way, Japan is just as absurd as I remembered it growing up. The other day my brother and I saw a homeless guy hurling a handbag up and down the sidewalk wearing a bright pink hooded sweatshirt with the word “HOBO” emblazoned on the back. Akihabara, meanwhile, seems to be run entirely by robots. And the girls dressed up as Little Bo Peeps in Harajuku are a bit freaky. On the other hand, you really can’t beat being able to get canned hot coffee from vending machines in the subway stations. (Speaking of which, if anyone knows anything about Japan, I ask: who is the “boss” on all the Boss Coffee machines all over the city? Lenin? I was thinking some Cold War-era coffee plantation owner-turned-Latin-American dictator. He looks a bit like a younger Efrain Rios Montt, perhaps.)