Tokyo - Saitama - Omiya feeling

Been here in Tokyo for a week now , jet lags gone , chilly to cold.
Fugu , varieties of sake , oden , ramen , soba - in one end and out the other.
An offer of a taiko drum jam with this old cat from Omiya -
and actual jam session last night with Masami Endo on acoustic guitar and Tana on drum.
Excellent 4 hour world enviornmental crisis show on TBS the other night;
Sad head shaking scenes of apes being carried out of burnt Borneo forests still smoking ,
big moon dish face looking at the camera bewildered as blood trickles down from below an eye,
young actor Fujiwara staring stunned in bright sunset at the 'end of the world' feeling out on the dry salted Aral Sea basin
with beached old rusty ships on their sides ,
Another Japanese crying on the edge of the pent up glacier melt lake besides Imja Glacier in the Himal ,
a place I could recognize easily having been there in 2000 .
That lake will burst some fine day or night , probably drowning the unlucky or at least destroying some of the Nepalese villages he's met on his trip up into high altitude...
In the Arctic , a round hole of open water between Alaska and Bering Straight , ice floes hollowed and ponded with fresh melt.
Huge polar bear fighting viciously with chained up sled dog the bear is trying to eat ...

Having a fine , low key trip
Somehow it's been feeling like just another week happening a world away from a place currently called home.
Next week each nights dinner is booked, only afternoons left.
The 12th - 15th we will be in Kyoto.
A friend is setting up a party at a small bar in Shibuya for the 18th
We return to NYC on the 24th