Leaving Las Vegas

On our last day in Las Vegas, we had to take a bus that left our hotel at 7 a.m., which was very early. I slept one and a half hour during the night, but my friends just skipped sleeping altogether.

We had JAL Pack tickets, which meant that a cute Japanese girl came and picked us up at our hotel and showed us which desk at the airport to check in at etc. One of my friends thought she was great, so he wanted to take a photo with her before we left. At the airport in LA there was an older, slightly overweight, man who helped us in the same way. I asked my friend if he wanted me to take a photo of him and this guy too, but he said that would not be necessary, haha.

I bought something that was a lot of fruits pulverized in a mixer and the mixed with yogurt for breakfast. As with most food in America, you got way more food than you needed. It was pretty good, though, and probably very healthy.

In the airplane, we got "okayu", kind of like rice porridge. Basically it is overcooked rice, with slight to no flavor. Here they had added some leek, shrimp, and ginger to give it a faint hint of flavor. Okayu is no bad, but I have never seen it in an airplane before.

On our way back to Narita airport outside Tokyo, we took a few weird turnarounds. It looks like the pilot is drunk, but I guess we arrived at a time where we could not get a landing slot immediately or something like that.

When leaving the plane, I noticed that someone was flying with a dog. The dog was just sitting around in the cabin. I have never seen a dog in a plane like that before. Mostly you see pets in small carry-on cages.

When leaving the hotel you did not have to do anything at all to check out. You did not even have to return the keys. So I now have a hotel key at home.

Hotel

We stayed in the MGM Grand hotel. It is huge. 50035 rooms, they said. Our floor was huge, and we had a long walk to the elevators. The hotel contains a casino (of course), lots of restaurants and shops, a theater with David Copperfield, a theater with Cirque du Soleil, a pool, a popular nightclub, and much more.

Long check-in line

Our hotel (the MGM Grand) has 50035 rooms, so there was a very long line to the check-in counter. Even if you assume everyone stays one week, that still means they need to check in people in around 1000 rooms every day...

While standing in line, an American looking man looked at my t-shirt and read the "I am not Japanese" in Japanese written there. I wonder why he could read Japanese.

Floor plan of our floor. We had very far to walk to the elevators.

Restricted access hotel

I stayed in a Toyoko Inn hotel in Tokyo. These are fairly cheap but good business hotels that can be found all over Japan. The one I stayed in was located right outside some political building, so there were police nearby stopping me and asking where I was going every time I tried to go back to the hotel. Once I mentioned that I was staying in the hotel they let me through, though.

Paris hotel

I went to Paris to present some research at a conference. I found a hotel about 10 minutes by walking from the conference venue. It was not that expensive, and the location was very good. The bed was big, the room was small, and the elevator was tiny. The stairs were uneven and leaned in many different and strange directions, making the walk somewhat exciting. A friend of mine staying in a different hotel said that his hotel had similar stairs, so maybe it is a French design or something. The WiFi was slow but reliable.

My view

The tiny elevator

Capsule hotels

In Japan, there is a type of hotels called "capsule hotels". They do not give you a room, they give you a plastic tube to sleep in. It is about the size of a small bed and if you are not too tall you can probably sit upright inside the capsule. The capsule usually has a small TV, a radio, and an alarm clock. The hotel itself also has either a public bath style bathing facility or showers. Sometimes there is also a sauna. You can lock your stuff away in a small locker (but a suitcase would not fit).

Some capsule hotels allow women to stay, and then there are usually separate floors for men and women, and separate times for the shared bath. Most capsule hotels are for men only.

Capsule hotels are usually cheap (by Tokyo standards) and located in popular entertainment areas. The main target audience is drunk sarariman (office workers) who missed the last train home and need somewhere to sleep until morning when it is time to go to work again.

Capsule hotels are not for people who are claustrophobic  though the capsule is not actually that small. It is also not recommended for people who need it to be quiet when they sleep, since there are usually two or three layers of capsules stacked on top of each other with a total of around 50 capsules in each room. The capsule walls are very thin plastic, so you can hear everyone else snoring. Also, the capsule opening through which you enter is usually only closed with a curtain (i.e. not sound proof). Sometimes drunk men who mistake your capsule for their capsule in the middle of the night might try climbing into your capsule too.

In the morning, everyone has their alarm clock go off at different times, since some people need to go to work early and leave at 5:30, some get up at around 6, other around 7 etc. So there will be the sound of alarm clocks beeping more or less constantly from 5:30 to 10:00 (when you have to check out). Some people leave their capsule before their alarm goes off, so no one is there to turn off the alarm in their capsules once they go off either...

I stayed in a capsule hotel after having been in the magic bar but before I had to get up and go to the airport to fly home. It is fun to try, but not recommended for longer trips.

My interesting hotel room in Montpellier

I reached Montpellier in the evening, and it was around 30 degrees Celsius. I found my hotel fairly quickly, and my room was clean and spacious. About twice the size of my apartment in Sapporo. It had air conditioning and wireless Internet that worked without problems. It was also very cheap.

There was a "Sex Shop" on one of the streets outside my window.

The location was great. Very close to the station (though I did not go to the station even once), close to three different tram stations (useful when going to conference venue), and 1 minute walking distance from the old city center, where all the interesting things in Montpellier are found. So there were lots of good restaurants nearby, and many beautiful things to see.

My ridiculously cramped toilet. Shouldn't they have put it in facing the camera instead?

Perhaps there is something important on the other side of the wall that makes the toilet unusable, I though. It turns out to be nothing but empty space, seemingly made just to make the toilet cramped... French architecture.

The drawbacks included being close to the station (noisy trains breaking noisily early in the morning when passing close by), being close to the city center (people partying until three A.M. every night on the street outside my window), having a window that could not be closed (not a problem except for the noise, but combined with point 1) and 2) on the list of bad things, not great), and a toilet that was so close to a wall even a Japanese (who are generally tiny) girl could not have gotten her legs between the toilet and the wall...

The window to the very lively city center could not be closed. Another somewhat questionable design decision.

I managed to explain to the staff in the local pharmacy that I wanted ear plugs, which solved my noise problem.