February 4, 1992

Dan,

Your mission, should you decide to accept, is to make your way on the Japanese railroad lines from Himeji Castle back to your bed near Seisinchou by 11:30 because that's when the trains stop running and it's now 10:15 (thankfully time at least is understandable) unlike the totally screwed up written language that the Japanese have evolved from Kanji (Chinese inheritance?) to Hiragana to Katakana to Romaji but at the moment there is no Romaji in sight ANYWHERE not even on the side of the train itself which is an express or is it a local? - it matters because it may go right by your stop however you could go up and over to get back which I did do yesterday but right now Sannomiya is where I need to get to and its Kanji symbol is (I think) if I can get there I know the way God I'm thirsty and this head cold with its runny nose doesn't help much in trying to find the box with the line down going to the left - Okay time to ask one of these people where the fuck I am supposed to go of course they don't speak or understand English at all but if I could simply pronounce "Sannomiya" and look puzzled maybe they'll get the idea. Great. I only stuttered a little bit and they pointed over there... Track 1

or Track 2? Gotta piss where's a bathroom? It's raining again and my socks are wet so it's good that I packed an extra pair in the bag but I can feel the athletes foot fungus growing. It's better here than in India at least because there I was totally entranced by the women in their elegant saris and deep eyes but they do have some rather bizzaro comic book pornography here but they cost about 300 yen which is close to $2.50 so it's totally outrageously expensive to do anything around here seeing as how I spent 1700 yen ($13) to go to a Japanese film tonight (boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl) and now I'm late and I probably shouldn't have gone - oops the conductor just told me to get off - this is the end of the line for this train What? Ooatsu-Kobe? Where AM I? Time to ask someone else. Thankfully everyone I've ever asked has been completely helpful and kind but hey they can't go with me and lead me by the hand right to the place that I need to get cause I'm tired.

Deranged in Japan,
Love,
Jon