I spent three days in Tokyo last week. It hardly seemed enough time given the travel time, though the days were busy. I was mildly put out at having to travel on Easter because of the kid. We did a quick egg-search early in the morning and then they drove me to the train station.

I appear to have discovered the secret of no jet lag...last trip was bad...this one was almost easy. I never failed to get eight hours of sleep a night and was able to wake up early on the Friday after I returned. My protocol:

I woke at 6 am my time and went to sleep at 9 pm Tokyo time (5 am PST.) Before going to bed, I took 50 mg of Diphenhydramine HCl to ensure that I actually slept and 1000 mcg of melatonin to reset my clock. I woke at around 5 am the next day. The next two nights, I did roughly the same thing, though going to sleep at 10-11pm.

During the trip, the worst effect I had was some pretty serious tiredness at 9-10 pm. Other than that, I felt mostly fine.

On my flight home, I forced myself to sleep as much as possible, again resorting to the sleep aids and Melatonin. I only got three hours and the Diphenhydramine made me a little groggy on waking, but it was enough to get me through the day. That evening I went to sleep at 10pm, with more Diphenhydramine and Melatonin and work naturally at 6:45 am. Friday night I took just the Melatonin and since have taken nothing. Other than some minor tiredness on Friday, I've been perfectly fine.

Much better than my last trip, where I ended up sleeping most of the day after my return.

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Twenty hours of flight left much time for media consumption. I highly recommend God of War: Chains of Olympus if you have a PSP. They did an amazing job of getting the big-screen game onto a handheld and the controls weren't near as problematic as I'd expected. The game has a serious difficulty curve though and I still haven't gotten through it.

I read Micheal Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union and enjoyed it, though not as much as Kavalier and Clay. Chabon has caused comment by being a "serious" writer who promoted genre literature of something that was worthy of more than contempt. "Kavalier and Clay" was a fairly straightforward modern piece about genre artists. This new book, however, was actually itself a genre work. Two actually. It melds the alternate history novel with the noir crime drama.

This has caused both the Hugo and Nebula people to nominate it for "best science fiction" novels. I've got mixed feelings about this. In general, I've mixed feelings about calling alternate history books "science fiction". They've always struck me as being closer to historicals. In this case, the alternate history bits, despite providing a fairly startling setting, are pretty minor. It's probably restricted to perhaps fifteen throwaway lines of text to justify the "Jewish state in Alaska". It's clear that the author isn't particularly interested in following through the historical implications. It's all about color.

On the other hand, I was very pleased that it avoided all the annoying bits that alternate histories fall into, usually with slapping existing historical figures in existing situations or having too little change. You really got the impression that the "America" in this book wasn't quite the same as our America because of the different histories.

The plot itself is good, though a bit confusing near the beginning and a little unsatisfying at the end. There's a bit of cliche about the protagonist, but I'm sure that this is intentional.

Apparently the Coen Brothers are making the movie...an extremely good omen.

I also watched a few of the first episodes of Jericho. As I'd heard, it is quite good, though I'm note surprised it was canceled. One shouldn't expect a show that kills off most of the US would be popular.