There are some really cool things in Japan. For instance, take the sink in the ladies room of a department store I visited today. Instead of just having a spigot and hot and cold water handles at the back of the basin, there is a hood-like shelf that hangs over the basin. It has three simple buttons. You can choose: Soap, Water, and Dryer. How clever! You just slowly slide your dirty hands under the shelf, from left to right and your hands come out the other side clean and dry. …and I wasn’t in just any department store. It was a crazy, crowded, jammed to the ceiling with everything you could imagine kind of place. The store is called Don Quijote and it’s a six floor discount emporium in the upscale Roppongi district of Tokyo. Picture Ocean State Job Lot or one of the discount electronics stores on Times Square and intensify it by a lot. Hot pink hand printed signs hang askew from the ceiling. Music blares throughout the store, playing different tunes that clash and compete as you move about. They sell stupid little Halloween pumpkin hats for dogs to wear, as well as Baccarat crystal. In the food department, you can get Spam and Ritz crackers (both very popular in Japan), as well as real Canadian maple syrup, locally grown melons and a million kinds of dried seaweed snacks. There is a luggage and bathing suit department (yep, the bathing suits are strung on a rope above the suitcases). You can buy washing machines, bicycles, a “Human Relations Calculator” (which looked to me like a regular calculator), and bras. Alex and I spent an hour in there, drawn to the craziness. He bought a tee-shirt with a nonsensical Engrish slogan that says “Souther Extra Enjoy Motorcycle”.