Ugh, jet lag. Just when you’re dropped in an unfamiliar place—sometimes with important business—you feel groggy and useless. And there’s no definitive cure, or even a single great treatment. But you can mitigate the effects. Here are some tips:

Genetically modified mice which had no vasopressin receptors were able to adjust to the clocks being put back eight hours within a single day, while normal mice took six days. § When the clocks were put forward eight hours then it took normal mice eight days to adapt, but those without vasopressin receptors adjusted in two. § Similar results were then achieved in normal mice using a drug.

I was only in North Korea for five days, but that was more than enough to make it clear that North Korea is every bit as weird as I always thought it was.

Welcome to the best in Japanese hospitality, the Shiba Park Hotel. It's been our tradition to serve the Japanese and overseas guests alike, with our well-trained, friendly and helpful staff. § This first class budget hotel in Tokyo offers services regardless of whether you are traveling on business or pleasure. § Shiba Park Hotel is a great located in the heart of Tokyo. This Tokyo budget hotel has great access to 4 major train and subway stations, and is close to Tokyo's major sightseeing spots as well as the business districts.

The embattled Fukushima nuclear plant, which stands as a controversial reminder of the devastation left by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, is being considered as a new ‘attraction’, with reports suggesting Fukushima disaster tourism could be about to get the go ahead.

Forty-four per cent of those questioned said they didn't believe the phone would interfere with the plane's instruments, but — perhaps more worryingly — 27 per cent said they couldn't cope without a switched-on phone and nine per cent said they couldn't turn off their phone as being uncontactable was unacceptable (we're assuming they weren't the brightest in the sample). § There's much debate about whether phones really can interfere with instrumentation, with the general feeling that the risk isn't worth taking and that as they generally won't work anyway it's not a big deal to ask flyers to turn them off. Some planes do have in-cabin coverage, but that only gets switched on above 10km to avoid interfering with ground networks.

If the car is to prevail, there's still one solution: get rid of the cities. That is, string them out for hundreds of miles along enormous roads, making them into highway suburbs. That's what's been done in the United States. Ivan Illich sums up the effect in these startling figures: "The typical American devotes more than 1500 hours a year (which is 30 hours a week, or 4 hours a day, including Sundays) to his [or her] car. This includes the time spent behind the wheel, both in motion and stopped, the hours of work to pay for it and to pay for gas, tires, tolls, insurance, tickets, and taxes .Thus it takes this American 1500 hours to go 6000 miles (in the course of a year). Three and a half miles take him (or her) one hour. In countries that do not have a transportation industry, people travel at exactly this speed on foot, with the added advantage that they can go wherever they want and aren't restricted to asphalt roads."

ETT travel timeSeating a maximum of six passengers per tube plus a baggage compartment, the ETT can travel at a speed of approximately 4,000 miles per hour while remaining airless and frictionless. Thanks to magnetic levitation, the vacuum speed means you can go from New York to Los Angeles in a mere 45 minutes, New York to Beijing in two hours, or around the world in only six hours. Despite the high velocity, passengers will not experience discomfort because the tube apparently only produce 1G of force at top speed, comparable to riding in a normal car on a highway.

In 2007, Michelin published its first-ever restaurant guide to Tokyo and awarded the city more stars than even Paris. Jean-Luc Naret, Michelin’s editorial director at the time, was emphatic: Tokyo, he said, was “by far the world’s capital of gastronomy,” a comment that seemed as much an indictment of Paris, and of France, as it was a nod to Tokyo. [...] With its 2013 guide, Michelin has again affirmed that the “muse” has relocated to Tokyo: The French food bible awarded three stars, its highest rating, to 14 restaurants (compared with only 10 in Paris) and dished out a total of 323 stars -- more than to any other city in the Michelin firmament -- to 281 establishments overall.

With photos.