Friday, August 29th
New City Hotel, Nishi-Shinjuku

I'm here!

Those words don't convey much on their own. But when "here" is understood to be "on the other side of the planet," damn the semantics. Japan is no longer "there," it's "here." That is awesome.

Yesterday I spent the day packing. I wanted to travel as light as possible, so there was a lot of saying goodbye to treasured possessions I had hoped to be able to bring. Lots of cleaning up so that I wouldn't leave behind too big of a mess. Lots of loose ends to tie up. With so much to do, it was convenient that time seemed to pass slower the more I anticipated the next day. I finished everything up at the reasonable hour of midnight, and went to bed.

Usually when I go to bed, I need to listen to some music or podcasts to get my eyes shut. Last night, I didn't bother. I laid down in my freshly turned bed, and looked out the window. I could see a single star shining through the smog, and tracked it as I thought about what lay ahead. Was I ready? Did I forget anything? How's the flight going to go? I marveled at how far I was going to travel, something on the order of 5000 miles. The starlight twinkled at me as if to brag, "miles? Try light-years!"

Moments of clarity like that do not come to me often, and I knew that I wouldn't get another one for a long time to come (for about a year, to be precise). I rolled over and went to sleep.

My alarm was set for 8:00 in the morning (I needed to leave the house at around 10:00), but someone apparently thought that wasn't early enough. I woke up at about 7:15 to the obnoxious ticking of the kitchen timer; it had been brought up to my room as some sort of parting gift, I presume. By about 7:30, I was getting ticked off enough to get up and chuck the thing out the window, but it seemed to sense my intentions and went off before I did. The funny thing about our kitchen timer is that the ticking is louder than the ringing... but I digress.

I couldn't go back to sleep, and I ended up getting up before my alarm anyways. Took a shower, took my bags downstairs, ate breakfast. Dad was kind enough to accompany me on bart to the airport (SFO). We arrived two hours before my scheduled flight, and it took about half an hour to check in. As dad and I were getting something to eat before splitting up, I noticed that the line to the security checkpoint was rapidly growing. I took a spot in line, and dad brought me a little seaweed salad to munch on. The line took about ten minutes to get within the roped area, when dad and I said goodbye.

At least half an hour to get through security (man, it was jammed), but no problems. I bought a little bottle of water and a pack of lifesavers for the plane, which ran me more than five bucks. I got on the plane.

My seat was a window seat on the left side of the plane, with a little monitor and a tethered remote. The plane taxied and took off.

Flying is nothing new to me, I do it all the time. I had prepared some movies on my iPod to watch, but once the monitor activated, it became apparent that Northwest had me covered. There was a selection of about 40 movies, a bunch of music, and even some simple video games. Throughout the flight, I watched "Kung Fu Panda," "Iron Man," and about half an hour of "The Wild." I listened to some J-pop music (HiHi Puffy AmiYumi had a song I really liked... don't remember the name, but I know it was on the album Honeycreeper), and played some Picross and Chrono Trigger. Great fun.

I hadn't registered a vegetarian meal plan. Oops. My neighbor was a nice old Philippine lady who decided that she didn't like any vegetarian item that was served to her, once she heard tell of my predicament. By the time the last meal of the flight came around, a few more people in the row were doing the same. I survived on charitable donations of fruit cups and rolls. People can be pretty cool sometimes. I helped her by getting her movies playing a few times and with her baggage.

As we descended into Narita, I whipped out my camera and took a few photos. A bunch of them through the window, the clouds were nice and fluffy. The captain said to turn off all electric items and stow baggage, so I obligingly put away the camera. As if on cue, one of the most blindingly vivid double rainbows you ever saw jumped out, dead center through my window, over Tokyo. It hung around for a few minutes, lots of people admiring it.

We landed in light showers, and got off the plane. I meandered through the terminal towards immigration and customs, taking a few pictures along the way. At immigration, I was faced with a stunningly huge line of people. Over on the other side of the room, there was a single open immigration window, with an officer hollering to get my attention. This, it became apparent, was the foreign passport area. They took my picture and fingerprints (a new addition since 2006), and checked my paperwork with impressive efficiency, and had me through to the other side within a matter of seconds. I got my bag and went through customs, and the officer looked at my passport, asked what I was doing in Japan, and waved me through even faster than immigration.

I walked into the lobby and met with Ariel (my coordinator), who took me over to the tired group of Emma, Kate, and Coral, my fellow North American interns. We shipped my bag and ate dinner at the airport, then (after some effort) retrieved Emma's bags, which the airline had previously lost. She had a nice big tear in one of her duffels, apparently a brand new one. :(

As we took the train to Shinjuku, the rain got harder. By the time we got through Shinjuku station (stopped by a photo booth on the way for our alien registration card photos), it was pouring. We got into taxis to get to the hotel, amid flashes of lighting and rumbling thunder. Checked into the hotel, I got my own room, where I am now typing this amid what sounds like an alien invasion just outside my window. I'm on battery power, because I'm not about to plug into these groundless outlets in a storm like this.

Now it's been about 24 hours since I got up, and I'm sleeping. Goodnight.

July 14th

New City Hotel, Nishi-Shinjuku

Today was my last day with the Mitsuda family. They all came down to the hotel for a goodbye ceremony, where anyone who wanted to went up and related their best experiences. There was a lot of crying and goodbyes, but everyone is gonna stay in touch, I think. I went up and talked about my experience with Take's school. I got plenty of pictures, too.

After that, everyone got some time off to explore shinjuku and find dinner. That is, almost everyone... the people who were transferring to LEX for their second homestay had to leave pretty soon after that, including Kage, Ben, and Becky. I'll miss Kage, I liked her.

We walked all around the freaking block looking for a place to eat, and short of a McDonalds and a couple conbinis, we couldn't find one. We had given up and were trying to find a shortcut back to the hotel through some back alleys, when this japanese speaking chinese dude popped out of some random door, and irasshaimasenned us into a little chinese restaurant shack hidden in the shadows. We decided to eat there (I don't think the guy was really giving us a choice), and navigated the menu to find something appetizing. I found what turned out to be tofu in a spicy sauce, with bits of something else that the waiter assured me wasn't meat. I didn't get upset in the stomach (aside from the spiciness), so he must have been right.

Ryan tried to order a plate of four potstickers, and ended up ordering four orders of potstickers. They weren't so expensive, so we survived, but then it turned out that they charged extra for the bowls of rice that they gave us with our food. My bill was reasonable enough, but some of the others' was kinda higher then they were expecting.

After that, we went back to our rooms. Danielle, Victoria, Bryce, and I went back to Danielle's room. Bryce pulled out a little ear piercer and pierced his ear on the spot, with a little help from Danielle and Victoria. He missed the right spot on the ear, and got it too close in. So, he yanks it out and whips out another piercer, and does it again, getting it right. By that time, I was pretty close to barfing, so Danielle gave me some chocolate and I went and bought some Haagen Daz out of the vending machine, and went back to my own room.

I'm sharing a room with Ryan... he's an ok kid, but sharing a 10' by 8' japanese hotel room with a 14 year old homo is not an experience I'd repeat in a hurry. The toilets in this hotel are terrible, too. When you sit down on them, the little asshole cleaner sprays downward for a minute or two, kind of a cleaning cycle or something. I wasn't really expecting it, see, and it kind of took me off guard... there's a good reason America hasn't adopted toilets capable of becoming freaking overlords.

June 16th, 2006

Tokyo, Olympic Memorial Hotel

Wow. I really like this 30+ hours in one day idea. There's enough time to do everything you want to do, plus enough time to sleep.

I got up this morning (technically the 15th) at 6:30am, CA time. I woke up, made sure I was really ready to go, and took the 8:15 BART with dad, for the airport. We arrived at 9:30, and approached the two fairly short United checking lines. One was labeled "First Class", and the other "1K Club". The first class ticketer directed us around the corner, to the ~500 foot economy class check-in line. The whole check-in process was nevertheless painless, but the money exchange had a ridiculously marked down rate... 103 yen to the dollar, as opposed to the actual current national rate of 114 yen (in addition to their ~$10 fee). Didn't have much choice, so I went for it.

Getting on the plane was easy, there was assigned seating. I happened to be assigned the best economy seat in the plane, 32-A on a Boeing 747-400 if you want to look up a map and see. I t was a window seat next to a nice japanese woman, who had apparently done what I'm doing, 20 years ago (only backwards). She proved a nice conversationalist until lunch showed up. The flight attendants were nice enough to get me a vegetarian lunch, even though I hadn't called it in ahead.

There were three in-flight movies; Hoodwinked (somewhat of a cross between Red Riding Hood and Phoenix Wright), King Kong (theoretically a good script, but it wasn't much fun to watch), and Wimbledon (crappy movie with some really nice bullet time tennis shots).

I was going to try and take some pictures of the ocean, but I couldn't open the window shade. Whenever I tried, the super brilliant sunlight would blind everyone is the cabin... that sun is freaking bright at 32000 feet. Takeoff and landing didn't work either, as they wouldn't let me use my electric digital camera then.

Coming in to Narita, I could see nothing but clouds, until about 400 or so feet. The first thing I saw was a country highway, with all the cars driving on the left side of the road. We landed, and I went through the immigration stuff, then got my bag, then went through customs. Narita is the nicest airport I've ever been in...

After coming out into the lobby and meeting Shanti, I set for a 2 hour wait in the lobby. More Labo people were coming out to join me, and all of them are very friendly and agreeable people. Nick Saira in particular is pretty cool, and Emily seems to be obsessive-compulsive towards my hat... not unlike myself. I bought a strawberry iced tea (I think), and a "potato bun" at a snack place. The potato bun was potato bread filled with a kind of baked potato filling. I think it had some fish in it too, I didn't feel so hot after eating it.

Emily snagged my hat for the bus ride to the dorm/hotel thing. Shanti was nice enough to have a vegetarian bento for me (and apparently someone else, though I didn't catch who). The ride back was awesome... all the cars in japan seem to have run into a brick wall or something. Makes me think of bulldogs.

We arrived and had a short orientation, and then went to our dorms. We decided to do the bath thing one at a time, partly because the bath room was tiny, but mostly cause none of the guys would want to go in together. I spent some time watching Japanese TV while waiting for my turn, and... well, if the commercials were like that in the US, TV would be a lot more worthwhile.

Once I got into the tub, I understood why this method of bathing is so popular. It's like a hot tub, only... well, japanese. Japanese bathing is nice. Now it is time for bed, after the first full-length day in my life. Oyasumi!