Worldcon day 2
Tired, hot, and sweaty. Those are the relevant adjectives for me tonight. The theme today is 'moisture'...

Anita and I got up pretty early and left the hotel around seven, looking for coffee and something for Anita to eat. We found a little coffee shop in Queen's Square mall. Afterwards we decided to walk to the end of the system of interconnected malls, because I had heard that was the way to get to Yokohama's Chinatown, one of the largest and oldest such enclaves in the world.

Well, apparently it was actually the way to get to the way to get there. We eventually came out at the Sakuragi-cho train station, where we could catch a train, a subway, or a bus. In the process we managed at first to miss the remarkable moving walkways that could have saved us a bit of effort. Opting for the bus, we rode through downtown Yokohama and got off just as soon as we saw one of the 'entrance gates' to the Chinatown.

We wandered around for a while in the cool drizzly morning, in streets with mostly shuttered shops, until we found a Chinese bakery with a pair of large steamers out front. We requested two humbaos, but were rebuffed because they weren't ready yet. (The girl showed us a timer still counting down.) We agreed to wait and were rewarded with a pair of fragrant white buns still far too hot to eat. So we continued on a snakelike path through more and more narrow alleys, between walls bristling with decorations, but not alone.

There were many people working. Some were pushing carts or carrying loads on bicycles. Others were in the process of renovating buildings. (We saw at least four buildings in various stages of completion, from gutted out to the workers removing scaffolding because they were done.) It had started out drizzling with fitful bursts of rain, but the bursts were getting closer together, so Anita bought an umbrella from a little shop while I made friends with the store cat. By this time our pork buns had cooled enough we could eat them as we walked.

Eventually we found a beautiful temple, but decided against paying to see the inside. The rain had worked itself into a near downpour and I was getting seriously wet, so we started walking out the other side of the Chinatown, looking for a way back to our hotel. The further we got from the Chinatown, the less it rained until, by the time we found a place we could catch a bus back, there were breaks in the clouds. However, this just meant it was getting hot.

The bus back to Sakuragi-cho train station was packed, but it got us where we needed to be, albeit on the other side from where we had started. So we walked back through the station and the mall to our hotel, taking better advantage of the moving walkways this time. It was getting quite warm by this time and so humid you could just about grab a handful of air and wring it out.

Then it was time to saddle up for the convention, so we headed down to the Green Room and I talked to some friends for a while until one of the others on the 'Remembering Robert Anton Wilson' panel found me: The Japanese translator for the 'Illuminatus!' trilogy. Apparently it took more than thirty years for Wilson and Shea's deeply weird masterpiece to get published in Japan -- it became available here in just the last few months!

At the panel we were joined by our third panelist and three in the audience, one of them Pat Cadigan. So the six of us had a fine time deconstructing some of the most complex and multi-layred literature in the Western canon, along with the equally complex personality of the man behind it. I really hadn't expected many people to show up, but all were well informed and had something interesting to say. So the panel was a success in the only way that really matters: It was interesting. It doesn't matter if it was interesting to six people or six hundred really. It only fails if it is boring.

After was some wandering around and time in the green room. Then Anita and I went over to the exhibition center to make a quick run through the dealer's room and suchlike before I took a turn at the Seattle Worldcon in 2011 bid table while the actual bid committee made a run for party supplies. I was so thirsty from sweating that I drank a large bottle of lemon water while minding the store.

I was there until my Kaffeeklatch session, which I bailed on by sitting over in pnh's side of the room instead. It turned out they were recording his Kaffeeklatch session for a future podcast, so I had to sign a release form because I talked too much.

The previous night we had made arrangements to have dinner with voidampersand and spikeiowa at a yakitori place that specialized in shochu, to the point they had three hundred different bottles of the stuff. So the next task was to get in touch with them and find out when. That turned out to be more difficult than expected, including a couple of missed phone calls.

Finally I got a voice mail from voidampersand with the time (7:30) and place, so Anita and started walking over there. As it turns out this required walking through the malls and along the rolling walkway to Sakuragi-cho station again. We found the place and were eventually joined by everyone, which now included whumpdotcom and cynthia1960. However there was no room at the inn: We were told to expect a wait until 9:00. That wasn't acceptable, so the entire group wandered around the building looking for a replacement, eventually settling on a Chinese place with an bizarre Steampunk decor.

The entranceway of riveted metal and underlit glass floor made me feel like I should be running through it carrying a BFG. The dining area was like an ancient brick tunnel, with domed ceilings and iron pipes running along the walls and hanging over the tables. We sat down to a decent dinner, accompanied by some amazing Tsingtao dark beer, until we were interrupted by the lights flickering and a deep rumble from hidden subwoofers.

Eventually all the lights went out except some at the ends of the fake tunnel. (Remember, this is on the third floor of a skyscraper.) Then water started to pour out of a large false-perspective sewer-pipe thing at one end, flooding along the recessed floor past all the tables. Quite cool!

I was glad I got to see it because I needed to take off right then. I had also agreed earlier to help out with the Seattle Worldcon in 2011 bid party. So I rushed back along the same moving walkways and through the same malls to the hotel (sweating all the way in the heat and humidity) and rode the elevator up to my room to drop off some things and pick up a bottle of Glenmorangie. Then I rode the elevator back down to the party floor only to be met by a wave of heat and a wet pong of humanity when the doors opened: There was no air conditioning on the entire party floor.

I clutched my bottle of single malt to my chest and pushed my way down the halls until I found the Seattle party, where I was immediately put to work bar tending; my duties consisting mostly of ladling orange stuff with purple lumps into glasses. I have no idea what the stuff was and had to tell people this when they asked. Amazingly they often wanted a glass of the stuff anyway, although quite a few opted to sample my scotch instead. (My rule on SF convention room parties is simple: Always bring a known quantity with you. That way if all they have is purple stuff or blue stuff or orange stuff, you have an alternative.)

I was there several hours, getting more and more soaked with sweat. During that time jaylake finally showed up and hung around long enough to say hello before giving up and going horizontal in his hotel room. (He had spent more total hours traveling than otherwise in the previous three days.) When my kerchief became so soaked it stopped mopping up the sweat and only pushed it around my face I gave up myself and stuck my head into a couple of room parties before coming up to my (mercifully) cool room to write this. Now I will go take a shower and go to bed, yet another exhausting and moist day of the con behind me.

Yes, I'm having a great time!