Off to Tokyo on a full Jumbo, sitting in the back given Armadillo & Pounce's (lack of) cash flow. We're doing a freebie project for a Japanese shirt company to prove ourselves. Four movies on the way there, at least two of which star Hugh Grant, one of my least favorite people. Heide Vertig, accompanying me, seems to find him cute. Am reminded that she previously demonstrated appalling judgment in men by marrying Monk Bonanza, but decide not to mention it.

Tuesday

Arrive at Narita. Taxi in to downtown hotel costs $250!!! My back is so knotted from the plane that I head for the hotel's sauna and end up with full-on massage. Brutal. Wonderful.

Wednesday

Over to the shirt men, lots of bowing and exchanging of cards. They find my name very amusing. I give the A&P shop preez, full of witty examples of competitiveness in assorted industries, but my crowd barely cracks a smile, even when I throw out Mars bars and Hersheys and ask them to guess who makes more money. They only want to talk about shirts, and since our whole premise is that you bring us in precisely because we know nothing at all about shirts (or whatever your business is, we know nothing), I begin to wonder how well Marky Wahlberg "sold" this trial case.
Dinner in a traditional Japanese restaurant, shoes off, ladies pouring tea, terrific shabu shabu beef, a bit too much cold sake, then relentlessly on to karaoke. Heide sings something by Madonna and I stick to the Beatles. Despite nursing our glasses, we're both staggering by two in the morning when we're allowed to leave. Hotel wake-up calls are done by tapping in the time you want into the telephone …

Thursday

… Uh-oh. Guess I didn't tap correctly. Surface at eleven to find six panicky messages from Heide, who ended up going to the shirt men without me. Arrive with pounding head around lunchtime to find her leading nine men in their fifties through a brainstorming exercise on 21st-century clothing trends. I see that idea #7 involves the Spice Girls wearing the clients' shirts in magazine advertising — good to see that A&P can recycle failed ideas with the best of them. Nobody comments on my tardiness, they're all far too polite. Apologize profusely to Heide during a comfort break, but she says she's having more fun than watching me do this for the umpteenth time.
We manage to avoid hospitality this evening and take the subway back to our hotel, proud of our map-reading skills. Lots of people are busy messaging each other on their mobile phones and someone even takes a picture of me with her phone and zaps it off to a friend. Hello, Kitty!

The Private Diary of Rayne Maker: "Flying Coach With Hugh Grant"

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