Yesterday was devoted to our business at the embassy and then visiting with Wakana's old friends and brother. All I saw was subway stations and trains with the occasional walk down a city street. We had dinner in Subiyashi which is where one of the key scenes in Lost In Translation was filmed. Look for the scene with the enormous outdoor TV screens.

Her brother is cool. He has one of those hole-in-the-wall music shops devited to jazz. We talked about music for a while as best we could considering the language difficulty. Next week he is closing the store for good which makes Wakana sad. It was his dream and it didn't work out. I can see how happy he is in that shop but there were no customers while we were there.

Next week he will join us at Wakana's home and then "kidnap" me to go to Tokyo to look around the music shops. We laughed about that trip. All the way he will be saying "Pardon?" because he doesn't understand English and I will be saying "Wakarimasen." because I do not speak Japanese. I expect we will have a great time.