Monday, April 23, 2007
Backpacks: Packed. Shoes: tied. Tickets: Purchased. Hostels: Reserved. Tokyo: Not currently besieged by the wrath of any city-destroying monsters. This vacation is a go.
April 5
We wake up at 8 AM, finish last-minute packing, strap ourselves into our clothes, and we are out the door. Jess and I (I’m dropping the J(5), parentheses take too long to type) meet up with a friend who will be dropping us off at the airport on this sunny Thursday morning. From there, we check in and hop on a plane that’s going to freakin’ Japan.
AAH! Adventure!
I’m a little nervous, Jess less so. See, I haven’t been out of the country in…well, effectively ever. Our family went to Europe when I was, what, five years old? I went down to Mexico for my Grandparents anniversary when I was eleven, but I had parents for that. No, this is the first time I’ve left the country under my own power, and I’m going to Japan, where the written language is completely impenetrable, the culture is different, and I all I have is a book to show me around. I have no idea what I’m doing.
We stand in line at check-in, though, and Jess is calm. She goes out of the country all the time, this is old hat for her. She spent a month in South America, and we’re going to a place that has hot and cold running water *everywhere*? Hardly even seems worth the effort to break out the passport.
Check in, no problem, time to spare. Security? No problem, time to spare. We waste time at the gate playing on our DS and reading. There’s a couple of Japanese kids across from us playing with dinosaurs and jabbering back and forth. The announcements are bilingual. I can’t understand a word of what they’re saying. AAH!
And with little more fanfare than that, we are on the plane. There are movies playing on the back of the headset in front, I’ve got books, DS, and an Ipod available to me, all I have to do is burn up time for the 11.5 hours it’s going to take us to get to Japan. I spend some time watching a Japanese fashion program that I can’t understand, and I busy myself trying to read as many subtitled characters before the text flashes off the screen. I can get maybe three or four. Yikes. I rewrite the alphabet in Hiragana and Katakana, the only two alphabets I know. Keep those skills sharp.
Sometime during the afternoon, we cross the international dateline.
-N
April 5
We wake up at 8 AM, finish last-minute packing, strap ourselves into our clothes, and we are out the door. Jess and I (I’m dropping the J(5), parentheses take too long to type) meet up with a friend who will be dropping us off at the airport on this sunny Thursday morning. From there, we check in and hop on a plane that’s going to freakin’ Japan.
AAH! Adventure!
I’m a little nervous, Jess less so. See, I haven’t been out of the country in…well, effectively ever. Our family went to Europe when I was, what, five years old? I went down to Mexico for my Grandparents anniversary when I was eleven, but I had parents for that. No, this is the first time I’ve left the country under my own power, and I’m going to Japan, where the written language is completely impenetrable, the culture is different, and I all I have is a book to show me around. I have no idea what I’m doing.
We stand in line at check-in, though, and Jess is calm. She goes out of the country all the time, this is old hat for her. She spent a month in South America, and we’re going to a place that has hot and cold running water *everywhere*? Hardly even seems worth the effort to break out the passport.
Check in, no problem, time to spare. Security? No problem, time to spare. We waste time at the gate playing on our DS and reading. There’s a couple of Japanese kids across from us playing with dinosaurs and jabbering back and forth. The announcements are bilingual. I can’t understand a word of what they’re saying. AAH!
And with little more fanfare than that, we are on the plane. There are movies playing on the back of the headset in front, I’ve got books, DS, and an Ipod available to me, all I have to do is burn up time for the 11.5 hours it’s going to take us to get to Japan. I spend some time watching a Japanese fashion program that I can’t understand, and I busy myself trying to read as many subtitled characters before the text flashes off the screen. I can get maybe three or four. Yikes. I rewrite the alphabet in Hiragana and Katakana, the only two alphabets I know. Keep those skills sharp.
Sometime during the afternoon, we cross the international dateline.
-N
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