/* The meeting */

We had out latest trip planning meeting last night. It's starting to feel like we are going over the same stuff over and over again. Bernard is the sort of person who needs to plan everything to extreme detail and Charles and I are of the opinion that "we are on vacation, why plan anything?" We are going to let him have the Hakone trip planned to the minute because that is his pet project. He wants to take "The Romance Car" from Tokyo to Hakone. It was so named because the seats don't have arm rests between them, perfect for couples to snuggle. Anyway, the romance car leaves early in the morning from Shinjuku station. So to catch it we will have to wake up early, and rush across Tokyo. Bernard has calculated exactly when we have to wake up and when we have to get from point A to point B to point C. We are letting him have this day because it will make the rest of the trip easier.

Last night though Bernard started to get it through his head that we are all adults and we can go off and do our own things without a tour guide. I don't know how happy he is about that, I think he wants this to be like those prepackaged tours when a tour guide will take you to places of interest so you can take a few pictures. Speaking of pictures that seems to be all he is interested in. The way he talks, he is just interested in taking pictures of the sights not in actually being there. Ah well, to each his own.

The meeting was a potluck dinner so Remi decided to bring drinks but he forgot that I don't drink and Charles was driving so that left him and Bernard to drink all the alcohol. He got really drunk. At one point he found out that he would have to go into a change room and be naked around other guys before going into an onsen. He got nervous. He has never been in a change room before. We tried to assure him that no one was going to be staring at his penis but he was still upset. You could see the fear in his eyes. Or maybe it was the alcohol.

Speaking of onsen, Bernard wants me to sneak my camera into the onsen. Cameras are forbidden there because of all the naked people but he seems to think that he will forget the experience if he doesn't have a photograph of it.

We have basically hashed out all the over riding plans for the Tokyo leg of the trip. We have to book the hotel and figure out what to do with the bulk of our luggage during the Hakone trip. We will probably be able to leave it at the hotel in Tokyo, as many hotels in Japan offer services like that.

We couldn't finalize our plans for Osaka because Olsen was not there but we are very close to getting that done.

Not much else to report.