Also thanks to this trip I have new appreciation for the ridiculously bloated TSA. If not for insane security kabuki guaranteeing a steady supply of airport captives, would decent, affordable places to eat and drink ever have landed so close to runways? (Can you say Vino Volo at EWR?) Now if only the fear factor could spread to airline catering sweatshops. Whatever was on my deezgusting Continental/United tray as “beef pot roast” was too scary to ingest, even before I started thinking I would be eating a dead cow seven miles up in the sky even as the waters around Japan are getting scarier. On my first day in Milan I was in the food hall on the top floor of laRinascente when the most violent storm I have ever witnessed slammed into the city, with sheets of rain and truckloads of hail. A more primitive people would have been scared straight to Kyoto. But everyone under the glass roof just kept calm and carried on eating and drinking and taking snapshots and making videos. Afterward, I went down a flight to housewares and saw eco-sensitive sponges for sale. In the shape of penguins.