Sunday, August 27, 2006

I am overwhelmed

Hey. I finally arrived. I can`t believe that I`m here in Japan. And I can`t seem to remember where the apostrophe is on Japanese keyboards. Its pretty early here, almost 7am, and since I couldn`t sleep on the plane, I only got to sleep after about 30 hours when I got to Tomoko`s house, I think I may have avoided any severe jet lag. This is about the time I have been waking up all summer to go to work, so it seems ok.

The flight from Chicago really sucked. The food was terrible and I was only able to get down the first meal, which was probably a mistake. It was some sort of ginger/curry chicken, which was abou 15 times over-seasoned. It made me feel really queasy, when combined with the turbulence. I ate the instant bowl of ramen they gave us for the snack along with the cookie, and then skipped the second lunch for fear of having to throw up on my fellow passengers. The smell alone was sickening enough. Other than that, the flight went by pretty smooth. I listened to my music and read for about 4 hours of the flight, and watched the crappy movies the rest. I watched `Over the hedge` which was not very good, `16 Blocks` which was ok, and `She`s the man` which was sadly the most exciting out of all of them.

The plane was really really airconditioned, so that when I stepped off of it, I was hit with the heat and humidity of Osaka really badly. It was like getting bitch slapped in the face by a 300 pound, sweaty otaku, who jsut realized I had bought the last shoujo manga from the discount bin. I was instantly sweating, and I am going to try to wear more comfortable clothes for today. It took me at least 35 minutes to clear all the quarantine and departure crap, since my seat was at the very last row in the airplane, leaving me to rush past everybody on the plane who was ahead of me. But, everything worked out. Tomoko was waiting for me outside of baggage, although I didnt recognize her at first since she was dressed so differently and her hair was longer. We took the bus for about an hour to where her parents met up with us. They are really nice people and luckily Tomoko has been practicing english with them, so our first meeting was not too awkward. I haven`t been studying Japanese, so a lot of my vocab has disappeared. This makes sentence composition really hard, so their English helped a lot. We got to their home, had a delicious supper, I took a shower, and then promptly went to bed. It was a nice evening spent with everyone though, and they liked the gifts I had brought.

On a side note, one thing I had forgotten about Japan is, motorcycles do not use traffic lanes like cars. EVERY motoricyclist either rides up between cars, or between the curb and the cars. This would be fine if it was just a few, but they ALL do it. And they are always going at least 20 km/h faster than traffic. It`s unbelievable, but it makes sense. In Canada, it is illegal, and if you get hurt or hit, or cause an accident bacause you are lane-splitting, YOU are at fault and get in trouble. But here, the smaller vehicle is in the right-of-way, which means no matter what, the bigger car pays, and usually just cash on the spot. That means there is no punishment for sriving like a bat out of hell on a bike. NUTS!

I`ll have pictures up soon as I get to I-house and set up my laptop. I will also try to make a video which I will upload to youtube for y`all.

PEACE out!

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

That's interesting regarding the bikes. I never knew that either. Can't wait to see why you didn't recognize Tomoko.

11:20 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Your airplane food may have been bad, but at least you got something. On the 5 hour flight coming back to Buffalo we didn't get anything, not even a drink.

7:04 a.m.  

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