Not much excitement here today, unless you count the earthquake and being chased off the grounds of the Imperial Palace by a guard armed with a whistle.

While we were packing this morning, about 7:20am (4:20pm Sunday Mountain time), we both started feeling a little dizzy. We're on the 11th floor of a 25+ story hotel, and Bryan noticed right away that the building was swaying. But instead of watching the incredible sight, we cowered in the bathroom and watched the toilet slosh for about a minute. It turned out to have been a 6.1 magnitude earthquake centered about 30 miles north of Tokyo. It was the strongest quake in Tokyo since June, 2000. There was no major damage, except that transit was disrupted for a while between Tokyo and the airport at Narita. But it was an adventure, nevertheless.

Later this morning, we decided to see the Imperial Palace. As we were approaching the Palace, a guard started shooing us away. Not being fluent in Japanese, and not understanding what the guard was trying to say, we ignored him -- bad move. He started chasing us down the sidewalk, blowing his whistle, and wildly gesturing for us to stay on the sidewalk. In a few minutes, we figured out what was going on. A procession of horsemen, horse-drawn carriages, police cars, and limousines pulled up to the palace. We think it may have been the Dalai Lama, who was visiting the Crown Prince.

It was raining pretty heavily by then, so we just headed out to the airport and boarded a Korean Air flight to South Korea.

By the way, last night we rode to the top of the Tokyo Tower, Japan's answer to the Eiffel Tower (but some 30 meters higher). The night view was spectacular.

There was one other adventure: bibimbap (bee-bim-bop). Bryan tried out this traditional Korean dish of rice, vegetables, diced meat, sesame oil, and hot pepper paste on the plane. He was not impressed enough to explore franchising the idea. But he didn't get sick, so here we are at midnight sitting in the airport at Incheon (outside of Seoul), waiting to board our plane to Beijing in the morning.

Next dateline: China.