I’m heading to Japan for 10 days. If that’s surprising news to you, I am almost equally surprised about it! My brother, Matt, is playing in an international piano competition, which happens to be in Osaka. My stepmother had the idea to make a family vacation out of it, so I said “sure!” (well, I had to get vacation time from work first, but that was easy – thanks, Buildium). Em couldn’t get the time off, unfortunately, so I am flying solo to meet my family in San Francisco tonight. Tomorrow, we continue to Osaka.

Friends tell me that I will like much about Japan. I have a list of things to explore. Near the top of said list is super compact hotels, like capsule hotels. Some loyal readers may recall my emphatic and thorough review of the Yotel in London’s Heathrow Airport. Also, recently my friend, Burlap sent along this story of a writer who lived in the Astor Place Cube in NYC, a rotating 8 foot cube of public art. As you can see in the comments, it is quite probably a staged publicity stunt, which is unfortunate. This reminded me of the group of artists who set up a living space in the Providence Place Mall parking garage – this actually happened.

So with that context, I found the following sights in Boston Logan Airport interesting:

Despite my love of compact and alternative living spaces and the elegant design it requires, I am not looking forward to sitting on a plane for 5.5 hours starting very soon and then something like 12 hours tomorrow. So it goes.