travel

Consider two bus trips.

During the first, the chartered coach is on time, has all its wheels, cylinders and seats, the driver is charming and helpful and, aside from passing pleasant roadside attractions, the ride is uneventful.

We kicked off our own little Discover Des Moines weekend at the city's center of gravity: the Iowa State Capitol, a pile of murky limestone capped with a magnificent 23-karat gold-leaf dome that roosts on a hilltop overlooking downtown.

Where to shop ...

Q: What do you do if the couple in the hotel room next to yours are getting amorous at high volume and keeping you awake?

Expert skiers seeking something new this season in New England might check out New Hampshire's reopened Mittersill ski area, next to Cannon Mountain.

Closed since 1984, Mittersill's 86 acres will be operated by Cannon Mountain, which also will provide shuttle service to it on weekends and holidays.

It's the kind of publicity snowsports resorts savor -- free, around-the-clock videotape of snow descending on their slopes, lifts, parking lots and roads.

Q: What do you think of that guy who was denied boarding on his flight because he was wearing a tracksuit and had a seat in first class? What should you wear in first class?

TOKYO - "Birds do it, bees do it, even all the Japanese do it ..."

Apologies to Cole Porter.

Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. Nope, we're in a bathroom in Tokyo about to alight on a (ital) ne plus ultra (end ital) electric toilet. In America, we sit, we go, we wipe, we flush.

TOKYO - Practice your chopstick skills before you go to Tokyo, although all restaurants keep at least a couple of forks set aside.

-- Unagi donburi. Donburi means "food arranged on steamed rice." Unagi is eel. Some people freak out because eels look like, um, snakes. Cooked, it's just a piece of fish, sweet-sauced and served over rice, often with shredded omelet to the side. Delish.

TOKYO - Tokyo is huge. If you stand on the top level of the highest skyscraper and do a 360-degree turnabout, you will see city to the horizon. It has parks, but no suburbs. High-speed roadways run through canyons of architecture, but numerous side streets, large and small, define neighborhoods, and each 'hood has its own main street and koban, police station cubicle.