travel

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.

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.

Q: I'm going to L.A. next week for the first time. If I see a celebrity in a restaurant, is it OK to say hi? Can I ask for an autograph or photo?

Q: I fly for business much more than my boss does. Recently, we were on the same flight, and I got upgraded to first class because of my frequent-flier status. The next day, he told everyone what a miserable time he had in a middle seat in the back of the plane while I was "living it up in first class." Clearly, he expected me to offer him my seat. Should I have?

ABILENE, Kan. - The 1909 edition of the Abilene High School yearbook included a tradition of the age -- a class "prophecy," in which a member travels in time and writes of his classmates in years to come.

One classmate, in this prophecy, has made it to the very top.

"If Eisenhower is elected president this year, it will make his third term," the time traveler relates.

Along the Mason-Dixon Line, travelers can still see some of the gorgeous vistas Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon enjoyed in the 18th century.

At night, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon studied the movement of stars and made endless, complex calculations. Their clever combination of astronomy and surveying resulted in the Mason-Dixon Line, a 325-mile border through the wilderness of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware.

Q: I'm not a picky eater, but recently I was at a restaurant and my meal was inedible. There was way too much salt. I thought about sending it back, but it was a nice restaurant, and I didn't want to make a scene. When and how should you send food back?

Q: Recently, I've gotten quite overweight -- fitting into plane seats is now challenging. On my last flight, the guy next to me asked the flight attendant, loudly, what she was going to do about "This huge lady taking up half the space I paid for." They reseated him, but I was mortified. What can I do? Should I buy two seats?