Final thoughts on Japan, and whining about jet lag

I'm back from Japan as of yesterday morning.  I learned some interesting things:

• When rounding third, the coach waves the runner home with a counter-clockwise motion.  Isn't that weird?  That's almost like having toilets flush the other way in the southern hemisphere.
• Baseball fans in Japan are like soccer fans in their rowdiness and energy, but baseball games are just like baseball games in their leisurely pace and thrilling moments.
• You can buy training chopsticks, with little finger hods so that kids get a sense of how to hold them right as they learn to eat.  That makes so much sense, but I proudly learned without them.
• Japanese wear medical masks when they are out in public with a cold.  The cities, and especially the trains, are do densely populated that germs would travel very easily.
• Bullet trains are so smooth that you can't tell how fast you're going.  But when a train passes you going the other direction, you know that you're both cooking with gas.
• You don't tip your waiter in Japan, so restaurants aren't as expensive as they seem, since you're saving like 20 percent on gratuity.  But without the gratuity, the waiters don't have as much incentive for quality service, so your water glass (which is super small to begin with) is always empty.
• Somehow, the rice in Japan is way better than the rice here.
• Jet lag sucks.
• LAX also sucks, and 12-hour layovers suck that much more when you're in such a lousy airport.
• I am so glad that T-Mobile has free tethering so I could spend a lot of those twelve hours on Hulu.
• New Girl isn't worth watching, but Prime Suspect is.
• When a cute girls picks you up from the airport, she looks even cuter than normal.
• Ambien works great.
• Bidet jokes are funny in any language.
• The worst food in Japan is at Disneyland.
• Sean Thomas is a patient and wonderful man.
• It is hard to flirt with girls when you don't speak the same language.
• My parents are well-loved and well worth loving.