Friday 7 June

The wonderful material in the combat observer series of reports will take up most of my time, but it is so wide-ranging and rich in detail that I feel I can dispense with almost everything else.

American food is almost more filthy than I remember. Just down the road from my hotel was a large dark place called Sakamura Seafood. I thought I would give it a try. There were a couple of girls standing outside who were so vast that I am amazed they could move. Fascinated and appalled, I ventured in past a sign saying ‘as much as you can eat for $12′. You queued, paid your money to the dismissive and bossy little Japanese girls at the till, (I could hardly blame them for their attitude), and then you piled your plates, wandering from row to row in the vast dark hall, which could have been a Chinese Communist Party canteen. Well, I tried just a few things: some calamari, small fried fish and little crabs. They could have tasted worse, but the whole atmosphere of joyless greed depressed me so much, that I hurried back to my hotel to read.