Japan... finally

Well, I'm in Japan! I got here May 20th. I didn't sleep at all on the plane... I wish I would have! I have jet lag really bad... It's about 4:15am (2:15pm in Austin) here and I'm wide awake. The strangest thing is that the sun starts rising around 4:00am, so it's fully lit around 4:30. Nothing in Yokohama opens until about 10am, and it closes around 8pm (except the bars, they close around 12am). You see little kids around 5 or 6 walking around by themselves, it's really strange. They go to school by themselves; you could leave your purse on the side of the road and more than likely it would still be there in tact when you came back.

From my bedroom window I can see Chinatown. It's the biggest Chinatown in Japan. The food there is AWESOME. The shops are interesting. I ate sushi the other night with my dad, and it's not regular sushi like the states... it's all sashimi, which is fine. We sat at the bar so we could see the chef preparing the sushi. We got Japanese tea and a set of sushi. I ate everything on my plate except one thing, it had baby sardines on it. I don't think anyone has seen a baby sardine, but they look like little tiny minnows; slimy, and unappetizing. The sushi chef could tell that I wasn't going to eat it, and he couldn't speak English, but all he said to me was, "Challenge". So, I ate it, and it was not good at all, but when a sushi chef challenges you, you have to take it!

I have to say that I feel really weird not knowing the language, you are all of a sudden deaf and dumb and have to resort to hand signs. I know a little, but not nearly enough to hold a conversation at all.

I am continuing to study... It's really hard, and intimidating.

I haven't done anything extremely exciting yet... I've been exhausted! But, I should be soon.

Dewa mata!

"Stuck Between Stations"

Well, I'm suppose to be well on my way to Japan. But, I am sitting on a hotel bed in Atlanta, Georgia writing this blog about how my flight got canceled...

I woke up at 4am (after going to sleep at 1am) at my sister's place to get ready to go to the airport to fly to Georgia for my connecting flight to Tokyo. I get to the Atlanta airport, and while we were taxiing to the gate, Incubus' "Drive" comes on over the radio in the plane, and I take that as a good luck sign, so my nervousness subsides... now I only have about 30 mins to catch my next flight, and my gates on THE other side of the airport... again. I get there just in time to board.... and we board. We wait 2 1/2 HOURS on the plane, not going anywhere, just for them to tell us to get off and wait. There was something wrong with the plane. The original departure time was 10:15 am, it was now almost 1pm, Brandon Boyd has failed me. A couple of minutes go by and they said that we would be taking off at 4:30pm, so I go grab lunch and sit, wait... 4:30 rolls around... speaker comes on... "Ladies and gentlemen, we have some bad news, blah blah blah, the flight for today is canceled, blah blah."

Long-story short: There is usually only one flight out to Tokyo at all major airports a day, and they depart in the morning time, so I rescheduled my flight for tomorrow morning. I call my parents and tell them not to meet me, my cell phone almost dead, I have to go buy a $42 phone charger, and now I'm stuck in Atlanta in a hotel until tomorrow. What a first-time international trip so far... but I guess in JMC's words, "Better wait a day to climb Mt. Fuji than take off now and run into it".