As you may know I headed off to Japan on January 14 to work with
the team creating the Winter Olympics Website.  Theresa joined me
on Feb 8.  We stayed until Feb 28.  Our flights were uneventful
with occasional sleep.  Strangely coming home had lots more jetlag
than the trip TO Japan.  In Japan I ended up working about 12
hours a day, 7 days a week.  Theresa on the other hand, ended up
shopping about 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. :-)

The website went well with traffic topping 50 million "hits" per
day and over 100 thousand in one minute.  I'm still working on
the post-processing and archival of all of the logs -- about 50
gigabytes of compressed information.

We were able to see several events.  We both saw Men's Gold
Medal Figure Skating and a Hockey game.  In addition, I saw a
preliminary hockey game and Theresa saw a Speed Skating event.  We
both went to closing ceremonies and froze our butts off (the only
outdoor thing we went to, it was at night and on one of the colder
days).

Nagano itself is in a valley and has fairly moderate weather.  It
was cold but not nearly as cold as we expected.  There were days
when you could go without a jacket but then there were days where
it was snowing and you were cold no matter how much you had on.
It only snowed a couple of times so the streets were almost always
clear.

Pretty much everyone there had some form of ailment within a
week of being there.  IBM had researched places that could speak
English so we did okay.  I had a crown come out and had to see
a dentist.  His office was in the back of the toy section of a
department store.  Theresa got Strep Throat.  Lots of people had
some sort of persistent cough (Strep?).

Theresa and I did lots of souvenier shopping and a bit of sight
seeing.  We both agree that the best part of Japan was the
adventure of trying to shop or eat out when you can't speak
the language -- although it took Theresa a while to appreciate
the adventure.  It's just plain funny to be so helpless in a
restaraunt that one of the customers draws an impromptu picture of
what you might order for your approval.  Most places had English
menus, picture menus, or at least plastic models of the food
outside so you knew what to expect.  In one case we had to take
the waitress outside and point at the plastic model we wanted.

We took plenty of pictures but we spent all our money so I can't
afford to have them developed yet. :-) Give me a couple of weeks
to get a few of them scanned in and online.  Lots of people had
digital cameras so there are a few other places that have images
online as well:

	http://www.mindspring.com/~smithwik/Images/
	http://bugg.com/

Almost everybody in Japan was very friendly.  There was one guy
driving a van around town yelling obscenities to the Americans but
most of the Japanese were excited to be able to talk to foreigners
and frequently gave us gifts.  We spent a lot of time shopping for
a Kimono for Theresa.  They can be incredibly expensive.  We ended
up buying an exquisite obi (that's the elaborate wide belt for a
kimono) and some silk so that Theresa might MAKE a kimono to go
with it.  Along the way, the shopkeepers would trade pins with us,
give us small gifts, and ask us about our trip.

While we were gone, Theresa's mother stayed with our kids.  We
used Email and IRC (chat) to stay in touch as well as occasional
calls from the IBM phone line in the office.  Linda had some
help from some of our friends and spent most of her spare time
decorating our house -- we had been too lazy to bother.

So we had a great time and came home to a nice clean house and a
warm welcome -- now if I can just get those credit cards paid off!