First Post from Japan! Travel!

So I'm past security in O'Hare. Everyone asks 'how was your trip' when you get places, but despite being miserable 98% of the time, you will invariably say 'oh ok you know.' Thus, I am going to document EVERY MISERABLE STEP OF THE WAY on the internet. Even though I'm going actually put it on the internet only after I have arrived and found some kind of internet. Sitting in the gate area, my first thought is that my plane is extremely large. I have only ever flown domestic flights, and I thought I been on some big planes, but I guess I've never actually been on a 747. It'll feel cramped as hell inside, and cramped as double hell after 14 HOURS inside, but from here it is terrifying to consider this will carry me directly from Chicago, the middle of North America, past "the farthest West I've ever been (Darwin, MN)" in about two hours, and then to Tokyo. For two hours there I will try to figure out how to move my luggage, then get on a domestic Japanese flight (terrifying!) to Itami, then my reserved shuttle bus driver will be standing with a placard! That is the plan. I sure hope everything goes according to plan.


Everything went according to plan! Except the writing about it part. The 747 was huuuuuuge inside, which made the flight itself much more bearable than I thought it would be. It made takeoff and landing a thousand times scarier, though. As far as the ride itself goes, it was long. Long. The plane had screens in every seat, so I watched night at the museum 2 (now with 100% more terrible writing, acting, cinematography, and effects (also, the video stream was subbed (into Japanese), but if you changed language to also be Japanese you got to notice they dubbed and subbed it with different scripts or something), a Japanese movie ("Midsummer Orion" I think) about a Japanese submarine in World War Two and the Americans that sought to destroy it (in the end it had a (I'm not being sarcastic, I teared up) very touching ending about how we are all really human). There was also X-men Origins, or "Watching immortal people fight is fun and interesting!" It also had a stupid twist at the end. Adamantium bullets, as long as they missed Wolverine's adamantium skeleton, would just go right through him, and he would heal the hole. As demonstrated when he touches his claws together, it just bounces off itself at isn't harmed when it strikes other adamantium. The idea that the bullets also did no harm other than amnesia, and the very fact that they USED amnesia.. give me a break. There was also a History channel-esque show (it repeated every 30 minutes) about a battle that Oda Nobunaga was in, but there were no subtitles (I would have been happy with ones in Japanese!) and the narrator was very hard to hear, even with the volume turned way up. There were also other American movies I couldn't care about. The thing had games too! Horrible, incredibly slow ports of very simple ones. Space invaders was my favorite, but the poor little computer in the screen went too slow (and reacted too slowly) for tetris to be anything but frustrating. It still beat me at chess, though. The high point of the flight was when, needing to use the bathroom, I motioned to my aged Japanese rowmate that I needed to get out. He opted for the 'still sitting leg swivel,' which given the incredibly limited space was probably not the best. I went for it, though, and in the horrible process the crotch of my pants got caught on his screen and ripped (not very much, just about an inch or so right next to the bottom of the seam for the fly, but probably noticable). Thus, I entered Japan with my bag held in front of me, in order to cover this embarassing fact. The food! Was better than I expected, but I expected it to be AWFUL so there you are. Fairly unremarkable. I dunno what else to say. It was long.

UPON arriving and passing through immigration (they spent longer explaining the procedures to us on the plane than it took to actually do them), picking up my luggage (why oh why did I say 'screw rolly bags! A giant duffel bag is the way to go!'), and re-checking in, I was directed to the gate for my domestic flight. The security thought I was an idiot for trying to take my shoes off.. and then, feeling like an idiot, I saw my gate for the domestic flight: A ticket machine in front of a glass sliding door, clearly leading to a parking lot with empty baggage containers in it, completely enclosed by buildings save a single access road. Now it seems obvious that this means a bus would pick us up after we had our tickets taken and take us to the plane, out on the runway beyond the terminal. After 17 hours of travel, though, this seemed like a trick. The bus arrived, though, and despite my fervent belief it would sprout wings and fly us to Kyoto, this did not happen.

Itami is a much smaller airport, and we went on a much smaller plane. The flight was, similarly, much shorter, though, and I was tired enough to sleep through most of it (we went over Osaka right at sunset, though, which was very pretty. It's a biig city (We hadn't seen Tokyo because it was very cloudy, and Narita is apparently very far from the city itself). Not as big as New York, but hey, not much is. As planned, there was a man waiting with my name on a piece of paper, but to get to him I had to cross in front of a Kendo team triumphantly returning from something (they were clapping as I came into the arrivals area.. very awkward...). I impressed the driver enough with my stammered and broken Japanese enough that he asked for my money in '- sen en' instead of thousands like he asked another foreigner taking the same shuttle, so that made me feel good. Then we drove for a bit, then we got to the hotel! I learned on this trip: 1) Travelling for 23 hours makes you tired 2) many Kyoto streets are very very narrow 3) cars and bicycles alike barrel along down these narrow streets at very high speeds, and it is terrifying, especially when you are tired. Then we got to the orientation hotel! All went according to plan. I then slept.