For the past couple of weeks I have been working with Tokyo Tech and the Japanese immigration bureau in a vain effort to renew my Japanese visa. To cut a long story short, I am currently on a tourist visa, which is only valid for 90 days - and in only 10 days the visa will expire. Given that I am a student in Tokyo, a student visa is the obvious option, but there is a 30-60 day processing period and no extensions are granted to American citizens. (Apparently, the American government makes life difficult for Japanese citizens who want to extend their visas, and such inhospitality is returned in kind.)

So, when I finally received word this morning that I have no choice but to leave the country I immediately began scouring the internet and calling all the tour agents around Tokyo. The problem is that I am a busy man - my mother is visiting next Wednesday, I fly to southern Japan next Saturday, and I have numerous classes/presentations/experiments littering my schedule.

By 12:30 I narrowed my options down and decided on a Sunday morning flight that gave me two nights in Seoul, South Korea. Talk about unpredictability: I am going to South Korea in a couple of days, which is one of the few East Asian countries I have yet to visit (the others being Bangladesh, Mongolia, and Bhutan.)

After picking up my tickets at an office near Shibuya's Tower Records building, the biggest in the world, it was back to reality: work in the laboratory, prepping for my LSATs, and a grueling three hours for soccer practice.