A “geek” writer feels a lot of pressure on a trip to Japan. There’s an implicit expectation that I’ll wow readers with tales of the futuristic Orient they have glimpsed in their comic books and their Adult Swim Inuyasha reruns. Having spent a great deal of time in the country, I know that I can’t live up to those outsized expectations (because neither can Japan, really), but still, the pressure is there.

Trouble is that the vast majority of technology you encounter here, both when visiting hives of gadget commerce and in daily life, don’t really stretch the imagination. You get familiar gizmos in mildly unfamiliar permutations. Smaller, more featured cellphones. A TV with a DVR and Blu-Ray built in. A Sailor Moon vibrator with improved lithium batteries. Same old, same old. Modern Japan has never been about innovation on the broad scale.

At least that’s what I thought, until I visited a McDonald’s the other day and witnessed true innovation. See, the other major pressure facing a writer in Japan is jet lag. People whine about jet lag on a cross-country trip in the United States, but flying to the other side of the world gives you a special sort of desynchronosis. Every traveler has his own melodramatic way to describe it, and my simile of choice is that it’s like walking around underwater. Until I recover, I can barely speak coherent sentences, let alone glurg incandescent morphing.

So where does McDonald’s come in? Well, the most frustrating thing about jet lag is that you can’t sleep it off. Even if you go to bed at the “right” time, you’ll wake up a few hours later, and you will not fall back asleep, due to hormone imbalances or some such. Mankind has long struggled to find a solution, and now we have it: the Megamuffin.

It’s a medical miracle. If you’re struggling to sleep, simply eat one of these, and your body’s non-digestive processes will shut right down, no questions asked. (If it’s after breakfast time, the Mega Teriyaki will do as well.) Sleep drugs have nasty side effects, but the only side effect of the Megamuffin is heart disease and hastened death. And skyrocketing health costs. The perfect cure.¹

In the 1980s, we feared Japan because they had studied our manufacturing strategies and improved upon them. In 2008, as McDonald’s in the United States struggles to reorient its menu with healthy, “organic” items, the restaurant’s Japanese minders have boosted their revenue by reinventing an old standby of the fast-food trade: increased meat. Look out, U.S.A., the student has once again become the master.

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1. I really did eat one, and it really does knock you out, but not until it’s finished delighting your taste buds with its eggy, double-sausagey wonderfulness. ↑