The mariachi blares through the night, mixed with the hustle of elephants. It is Friday night in Oakland, California — a fact embraced by our upstairs neighbors, who are partial to Mexican polka.
"It's 11 p.m. — urusai (shut up)," my wife says with jet-lagged despair. She fears for her sanity, the future of sleep in a strange noisy land, where the savages do not care about others.
"We are not in Japan," I observe, unhelpfully. "We could crank up 'Deguello' — the song of death from the Alamo. That would make the point."