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I just flew back from Tokyo and boy, is my shaving arm tired.

To be honest, I was kind of hoping I'd run into some Feather products while I was overseas, as the Osaka-based Feather company makes the most scary-sharp DE and disposable straight razor blades I've tried, as well as the super-cool Feather Artist Club disposable-blade straight razors. Ray DuPont at Classic Shaving is the only source in the US for these products, but I figured hey, I bet you can buy Feathers at every noodle shop on every corner in Japan.

That's the shavegeek story, anyway -- that Feather, this huge "Gillette of the Mysterious East" behemoth, is as popular/mundane/ubiquitious in Japan as Gillette is here. But like most shavegeek dogma that began as a a speculative comment on one of the forums by a guy whose sum total knowledge of Japan is the Transformer action figure he sleeps with at night, I learned that it's just not so.

Being so not a shavegeek myself, of course I ducked into every single drugstore and shopping center we passed in a week's worth of strolling Chiba, Tokyo, and the well-to-do Roppongi area. Of the dozens of shops I checked out, only one had any Feather products, and that was a drugstore in downtown Tokyo that just had one of the cheap, plastic DE silo razors and a few packs of the stainless (not platinum) DE blades -- not exactly the cream of Feather's crop.

The shaving culture in Japan seems no different than in the US, for the most part. Multi-blade cartridges and disposable razors dominate, as do foams and gels. The only time I ever saw the good stuff was in the hotel lobby shop at the Grand Hyatt in Roppongi, which sold -- ta daaaa -- Art of Shaving brushes and creams. Halfway around the world and the best I could find was AOS. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But I can pick that up a mile from my driveway.

One thing I did do on this trip was catch a shave from Merkur's little travel DE razor, which I haven't used in well over a year. I packed it and a pack of Merkur DE blades in my carry-on along with a tube of Taylor's lavender shaving cream and a little travel bottle of Trumper's Lime Skin Food. Took up next to no space in my bag, and a half-hour before we landed in Tokyo after a 14 hour flight, I snuck into the bathroom for a quickie.

Even without a brush, the Taylor lathered up in my hands pretty impressively, and I got a fine, lubricating lather. I have to say, that little Merkur travel razor really kicks ass for a DE. I forgot how nice this little guy is. It gave me an excellent shave in no time, and I felt and looked a lot more human after the 14 hour flight. Amazing, the psychological effect of a fresh shave.