October 8th, Kyoto, Japan

On arrival at Osaka's Kansai International Airport I was somewhat alarmed to see a big board with my name on it on the conveyer belt which should have my luggage on it instead. On contacting the indicated desk I was informed that one of my suitcases didn't make the connection in Singapore. Not being one to stress the little things I decided to play it cool and see if I could squeeze some compensation out of the airline. I explained that this is most inconvenient, I mean, how am I supposed to even brush my teeth without my toiletries before going to bed! Last I tried this in the United States I got a bag of amenities containing, among other things, what can only be described as a budget model toothbrush, a tub of paste the size of half my pinkie and a shrug, so it came as a bit of surprise when this time I was handed an envelope with 12,000 yen in it (over a hundred dollars). On one hand, I felt that this was fairly generous; on the other hand, I've heard that Japan can be a little expensive but it does make you wonder about the price of toothpaste here.

My newly acquired wealth didn't last. No matter how many times we added the various charges, surcharges and taxes, the total cost of my monthly car rental came to about 20,000 yen more than the estimate I received via email. Easy come, easy go. Fortunately I always pack my toothbrush and toothpaste in my carry-on anyway.

Renting a car in Japan may seem like a flawed idea, what with the ridiculous cost of tolls on motorways, record gas prices worldwide and generally outstanding air, rail and bus networks, but if you have a lot of luggage and routinely need to be somewhere, often out of the way, before sunrise, you really don't have a lot of options. To avoid the tolls I would simply not drive on the motorways, to conserve gas I would avoid taking 100km detours only to get a taco and a satellite positioning system would ensure I was never lost. There was only one little wrinkle. The available in-car navigation system was in Japanese only and I can't tell my Kanji from my Katakana. Well, actually, I can, but it doesn't help. Still, I figured that as long as I always know where I am, the direction the car is facing, and have a decent English map to cross-reference and plan my route, getting to where I wanted to be would be a piece of cake. And of course I made sure my car had an automatic transmission so that I would always have one hand free to spill coffee on the map.

I should really have asked how to operate the navigation system at the rental counter but it simply didn't occur to me until I was on my way. Having burned over two thousand yen in less than twenty minutes on the motorway I soon switched to a toll free highway where red lights and Saturday night traffic in pouring rain provided ample time for a game of trial and error. By systematically selecting every menu in turn I fairly quickly figured out the how to zoom in and out. However, in the process I've also accidentally enabled the turn-by-turn voice navigation feature. At first having a not entirely unattractive Japanese female voice guiding me along was mildly entertaining. However, it soon became obvious that her place, or where ever it was that she was trying to take me, was not where I was going and once we passed it she kept on repeating the same two words before every intersection (judging from the directions it was 'turn left, turn left, ...'). This very quickly became unbearably irritating and reminded me of some of my female friends back in D.C. who seem to think that they can drive better than me and as passengers in my car feel the need to reassert this verbally at every stop sign, traffic light and driving maneuver. And for good measure sometimes in between too. It took me about half an hour to switch off the voice directions and yet after several years I still can't figure out which buttons to press to stop my female passengers nagging. I suppose that's why I'm a software engineer and not, say, an editor for the 'Cosmopolitan'...