Arrived in Japan!

It is currently 9:49p.m. on March 31st and I'm sitting in my nice and cozy hotel room, eager to get to bed after a very very long day. But I do want to make sure I keep this blog up to date and don't get behind (which there is always potential for at the beginning). So how did I manage to finally make it to Kyoto?

At a very dark 4:45 am, I awoke to the vibrating of my phone's alarm (I don't do sound alarms; vibrating alarms jolt me awake, though in this case, I hadn't really slept much do to the nerves from the coming day). After putting together the rest of my stuff, my mother urged me into the car and we headed for the Burbank airport. Getting through security and waiting at the gate was pretty uneventful and getting on the flight was uneventful. Following 45 minutes of reading my required book (I managed to flash through 4 chapters, around 75 pages during the flight), we landed in SFO and I was forced to figure out where to go from the domestic UNITED terminal to the international UNITED terminal. Granted, I've been to SFO plenty of times (due to my job with EPGY and shuttling kids back and forth) so I knew where the international terminal was...kind of. But I eventually followed the signs, found my gate on one of the UNITED departure TV screens and made my way across what seemed like half of the airport to the gate, and found a group of Stanford students already sitting and waiting. :)

The twelve hour flight itself was also pretty normal; there was very little turbulence, no babies were constantly screaming, lines to the bathroom weren't unbearable, the airline food was actually appetizing, and the hours seemed to roll by. On the plus side as well, Nancy sat next to me, so we chatted throughout the flight. Unfortunately, I did not finish my required reading...I did get through 75% of it though (if you count the parts I skimmed...). And I read the entire Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Voneggut, which was really interesting (in terms of story structure and plot). But I didn't get to any Japanese (whoops) and I didn't really sleep (I don't really think closing my eyes and listening to my ipod counts as napping). So basically I've been up for more than 24 hours (considering the 16 hour time difference -- 16 hours, ISN'T THAT CRAZY?)

The flight landed, we made it through customs suprisingly fast (though not really considering how efficient the Japanese are and how inefficient America is...), found our bags (though I had a freak out moment I though that my bags had been left in SFO -- turns out Nancy and I have the SAME luggage; coincidence?), and met up with the taxi service that would be taking us to the hotel (NOTE: this entire time I was trying to get wireless in the airport with my ipod touch and apparently not even the tech savvy Japanese have wifi in the airport...LAME). Our taxi driver was very kind and managed to squeeze all our luggage (8 or 9 suitcases between 5 students) in our taxi and off we went!

(Me and Nancy in the Taxi)

We did stop on the way to the hotel to stretch our legs since it was a 1.5-2 hour drive. And the place we stopped out, while it was a popular spot for Asian tourists of Japan (IT'S TRUE!!), we saw...CHERRY BLOSSOMS! So I can cross that off my list now.

Anyway, we made it to the hotel, checked in, and then I found out that between my room and Nancy's room, my friend Austen had her room! And then we found Ben (or rather ran into Ben in the lobby) and we decided to go get dinner together. We ate at this place called Mr. YoungMen (see below) and I had delicious ramen. :)

After that we just walked around for a bit and then headed back to the hotel...but stopped at a SIX STORY ARCADE. I mean...SIX STORIES. This was so crazy! We ventured up to the second floor and played 4 person air hockey (teams of two in case you had trouble with the math...). HOWEVER, what they don't tell you is that at random points in time the game will spit out more than one puck on the hockey board! We must've looked like loons, trying to keep up with the four pucks that were out, laughing our heads off, claiming which team was the better team. It was none to say the least AMAZING and something to do again.

Anyway, I do need to head to bed. We have to be in the lobby tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. to start our orientation. I believe it involves a scavenger hunt of sorts tomorrow.

Oh Japan...I love it here and I've literally only been in the country for six hours. Can't wait for the rest of the quarter!