Rubin Trek: Another Day...

Observations:

--baseball is huge here and you see lots of practice on playing fields
--when taking an escalator, you stand on the left and allow those who want to climb to go on the right (driving is on the left, like England)
--we are always on the look out for bread, which isn't popular here. Rice is the main source of carbohydrates. However, there are a number of French bakeries that sell very small loaves for $4-5. I think we'll stick to rice.
--it's impolite to blow your nose in public. Rather, you're supposed to just sniff. Yeah, right. I rarely hear people cough or sneeze. How can they hold in all those natural functions???

We had a wonderful sushi lunch with our host, Mie Ichihara, and retired Japanese professor, Tsutomu Kambe, who we had previously met while at a conference in China 2 years ago. As my friend Margot said, "If it tastes good, it's probably not kosher". How true! As you can see in the picture, this was a shell fish feast. We loved it!

Our guests at the sushi lunch

Yum-yum!

On our host's recommendation, we went to a new-ish development on an island in Tokyo Bay called Odaiba. Here they built gigantic, futuristic buildings that are conference centers, shopping malls, restaurants, shops, arcades, amusement parks, etc. There's also a great deal of port activity with trucks and container ships. The sizes of these buildings are just enormous and filled with businesses of all kinds, including a Toyota Design Center which highlights new models and Toyota race cars.