The past few days … gave up on the dead hard disk (only had a couple more days to go before warranty expired) and swapped it for a new one. Bought a PS3 (2 games, 1 Blu-Ray movie) and HD-TV – wasn’t quite planning on the TV so soon but a window of opportunity opened. Got a 3 year old Sony 29 inch not-plasma not-LCD TV for sale cheap if anyone’s interested. If no one’s interested, perhaps someone might suggest a charity in HK that would be interested in getting it as a donation.

Saturday – crap sushi for lunch (only $28 for 8 pieces and well worth that amount)(yeah, I know, two days before coming to Japan, but T is staying home) and then Chinese style Korean BBQ for dinner (all you can eat in 90 minutes for $105 per person)(and yeah, I’m going to Seoul in two weeks, but T and the two other friends who joined us aren’t). Then took our friends to Neptune as they were curious. T did a quick count and said there were at least 10 women there I’d been with at one point or another. Sunday night vaguely okay Thai food at Thai Farmer – not as good as Thai Hut but not too far off and at least you can sit, accompanied by the pounding coming from New Makati disco just upstairs.

One nice thing about Sunday in HK. You pack for a trip, realize you need a new gizmo, and the computer mall is still open and selling away at 8 PM on a Sunday night.

Flight to Tokyo – Cathay Pacific lounge in HKG no longer has smoking rooms. I am so pissed. One of the delights of travel for me – settling into the lounge for an hour, chilling out, free food and drink, massive doses of nicotine depending on length of upcoming flight. Now you gotta go all the way outside to one of the regular smoking rooms, where you can’t sit, the room is filled with smoke. Pain in the crackpipe. Especially because I don’t see why they didn’t file for an exemption – the smoking rooms are very well separated from the rest of the lounge, they’re separate rooms for fuck’s sake, and if the airport can operate smoking rooms, why can’t an invitation-only club?

Flight seemed more than half-empty and service was only half good. Did they cut back on staff because of number of empty seats? (Would make sense, wouldn’t it?) But when I hit the little buzzer I had to wait ten minutes for someone to show up – and they weren’t responding to the buzzer, it was drink service. Bleh.

Then, well, I knew in advance … I’ve stayed in the same hotel here (Imperial) 25 or 50 times and have been trying to avoid it the last few trips. The hotel I like now (Grand Hyatt) was fully booked. So was the new Prince Park Tower. Other hotels I want to try (new Conrad and new Four Seasons) are too expensive even for my budget. So I’m at a small place in Ginza that I used one time about 10 years ago. It’s actually quite nice except taxi drivers don’t know where it is (even though I know the Japanese name) because it’s small and my Japanese is meager and so even though these guys all have GPS I end up having to yank out my map book and show it to them.

Spent a coupla hours at HMV and Tower Records in Shibuya. Bought some CDs and some Japanese tattoo magazines. Not that I expect to have time to get any ink while I’m here (though one never knows), the magazines are great anyway. Not seeing much odd stuff but then again not in the mood to really comb the aisles carefully. There is a DVD of Led Zepp, Earls Court 75, but it’s selling cheap and wonder if it’s any good. Also spotted a DVD of Miles Davis live in Europe in 67 (Shorter, Hancock, Williams, braindead, can’t recall the bass player and I should be able to) but black and white and short running time. Did buy Japanese editions of some recent albums I’ve liked (bonus tracks) and a couple of things sounded good on the listening station – The Shins and a band called, apparently, “!!!”. Was looking for some kinda funky, downbeat, jazzy compilation but started getting hungry before I heard anything that sounded like what I wanted. So many listening stations, so little time.

Even in the cold weather and all bundled up (well, more covered than usual) the girls in Shibuya and Roppongi look ever so yummy.

Shaky – you leave some comment as anonymous to some old post of mine and I’m supposed to know which post it was so that I can respond to you there? Life’s too short. You follow the link to “view my complete profile” and there’s an email link there. If your question was regarding what I think it was, I didn’t like the FM transmitter for the iPod because the only way to get a blank station that stayed blank was to disconnect the car’s antenna. Any spot on the dial that seemed blank would come to life as soon as I came round some bend or over some mountain. So the iPod would cut in and out, interference from radio stations, basically useless. And I didn’t want to disconnect the antenna from the head unit or remove the antenna from the car.

And that’s it for now. Gonna take a bath, maybe watch a movie or listen to some toons, zone out, the next three days will not be pleasant ones.