I keep staying in the Toyoko Inn, in Japan. The are the Days Inn of Japan, except that they are super clean, efficient, well located, have fancy shower toilets, are run by great people, and have free internet access... plus they are dirt cheap. Even better you can make reservations on line in English without using a credit card. I stayed in Hakata for $40 last night, and I reserved it online about 30 minutes earlier. They make traveling very easy since I can just blow into any town and expect to find a Toyoko Inn, and I know I'm getting the exact damn room I had in the last town. No surprises is a good thing when booking a hotel in a foreign land. So they have free Wi-Fi in the lobby which is nice, and regular ethernet in the rooms. The only problem is that they are blocking SMTP on all of the standard ports. I knew Dennis (a coworker) had no problems sending email from his room, so I guessed it was unblocked via the wired connection. So in my wanderings yesterday (I walked for about 6 hours straight) I found a few decent electronics stores. They have pretty much the same shit we do, but at higher prices. It was pretty disappointing. They do have a ton of phones and MP3 players, but who cares... they all do the same damn thing. It's just fashion. In the last one I found a Compact Flash ethernet adapter for 3650yen. Not a bad price, and worth the gamble to be able to use the internet in my room. So I pointed and indicated I wanted to buy it. The clerk just started talking away at full speed while I just looked at him stupidly nodding away. I then pulled out a credit card and put it on the counter and said "hai!" He still was seemingly reluctant to sell it to me, so I pulled out my PocketPC and showed him I knew what I was going to do with the card and that it had the right kind of slot. Now he calls over someone else, who also knows no english, and he starts talking at high speed too... I again pointed at the credit card, and finally he reluctantly started to ring up the transaction. Then his buddy tells him something and he repeats it to me. I already guessed what he was saying "No Returns",　　　I said "no returns" and nodded, but that didn't mean a damn thing to me. So he starts talking at high speed again, and I finally say "wakarimasen" which means "I don't understand". I then follow him over to the portable translators and he keys in some Kanji that is translated to "no returns". I nod and smile, and finally I am permited to buy the damn thing. I got back to the hotel and nervously pluged the thing in... and presto! It just fucking works. No configuration, no drivers, nothing. It just worked. Sweet! Except that damn firewall was still blocking SMTP outbound. The reason I wanted it, is that email is the easiest way for me to post pictures to Flickr. The Pocket PC's Internet Explorer sucks, and pukes on the Javascript on the flickr upload page. If I had the time I'd just make a Flickr upload proxy page on this site, but it's a bit too late now. So updates of the blog, and my Flickr photostream will continue to be sporadic,　and most of the better quality pictures will have to wait till I get home... which thankfully won't be too long now. I'm starting to burn out. I'm going to work my way to the beach this afternoon... hopefully that will restore my spirits. That assumes I don't get too much sand in my shorts.