Last night we bought tickets and confirmed our departure for Japan this Monday. As hot and sticky as Oakland has been, Tokyo should be hotter and stickier. I've never spent a "shower-ish" summer there - I've heard Tokyo's the wettest.

Mt. Justin in Japan, thank you Kenji Eno Well Jane and I will be getting wet with the other First International Mobloggers Conference*. We've got an assignment to record the proceedings and I'm moderating a panel. We'll visit Jane's aunt, the best cook I've met in her town. We'll buy lots of socks with individuated toes. We'll eat skewers and noodles and foods I now miss surrounded by burgers and burritos. In short, I'm excited to return. And make one more use of my Japan Journalist Visa!

Work looms, everlarge - I'm constantly questing for purpose. As Jane mentioned on her web site, we've been working on a book about the social impact of video games, studied across Asia and the United States. So that will continue on planes and straw mats and stores lit neon pink. Research will mingle with good people and nostalgia to give our jetlagged footfalls purpose, for nine days.

* - Moblogging - mobile weblogging - basically, posting a picture and text to the web from your mobile phone or PDA. I wrote about Moblogging in November: From Weblog to Moblog.

Sounds like fun doesn't it? Sending pictures and text to friends or the web at large? "Look at all this food! Won't you come join us!" Or, "I just landed in Tokyo, and this is the face of the security officer who will proceed to take my phone away for illegal use of a camera in a secure zone." I wonder what the health-check quarantine zone at Tokyo's Narita airport will look since the advent of SARS in much of the rest of East Asia. Man it's hot in Oakland!