Nihon.

Japan.
Nice to "see" you guys here.
Oh geeze, this is crazy.
Alright let's start with some honesty. On my Facebook note, I said that I would be writing short little tid-bits for you guys to read. I'll be outspoken and admit this one could be long. However, for those of you that only want to skim through this, it'll include picture (whoaaaaa already =]). So have at it.

That said...
I'M HERE!! IN OSAKA, JAPAN. Mark my words, it's currently...the 5th? Almost the 6th? Geeze, I don't even know. Crazy time changes.
So yeah, this is exciting, as you may imagine. I am in Kansai International Airport. The people are awesome, the food is great....whoa I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's start at the beginning.
I left home on Monday, August 4th at about 8:30 AM. Got the airport, checked in and left by 10:30. Here's the cool part though...I thought I'd be alone, but there was actually a group - 3 high school girls and a middle school guy - as well as their adult leader, who were returning to Nagoya, Japan after staying in Bloomington for about two weeks. The adult leader was American and brought some of his students from Japan to the US to practice their English. It was so, so cool! Anyhow, we flew out and arrived at Detroit International Airport, or whatever it's called. We had some time to spare so we went to get some lunch. And alright, you probably didn't know this (I sure didn't) but Detroit airport is LOADED with Japanese people. I'd say like 40% of the people. Why Detroit?
Beats me.
I figured it'd be California. Go figure.

But anyhow, we went out to get lunch, and the girls all went into the Japanese fast food place and got some ramen, and soup, and who knows what. And of course, they ate it all with chopsticks. -_- Crazy Japanese. Anyhow, I decided I was going to get better with the chopsticks and picked some up and gave it a try. Grrrr.
I understand the concept; it's simple really. And I can do it fairly regularly. But it's the times that I mess up that annoy me. My chopsticks cross and everything falls. *Sighh*
So then the girls decided they were going to give me some help with it. They started speaking in Japanese, asking the adult there to translate for them. Of course, he said no. We would have to figure it out ourselves...it was what I was going to have to do later anyway.
Good call. I see the wisdom in his words, but it was still hard to follow through, knowing he could have translated everything.
...Okay, okay, he was right. We did understand each other. Their English is about as good as my Japanese, which you may know isn't quite all that. :-P
But it worked, and that's what was really cool.

Soon after, we had to part in our ways. They were going to Nagoya; I was headed to Osaka. I took a few pictures with them before I left. Check it out. Note: This marks the beginning of the peace sign pictures. And I wasn't even in Japan yet.
Go figure.
I never got their names, and I kinda regret that now.


Anyhow, the actual flight. I was on a monster 747, of course. The double decker kind. Freaking awesome plane. It was different from the plane that I usually take to Brazil in that, besides its massive size (seats 400, I've heard), is that there was one big screen every so often for movies, instead of one small individual one for each person. It was pretty awesome how the different channels actually controlled different languages though.
Channel 1: English
2: Japanese
3: Chinese
4: German
5: Spanish....
...so on, so forth. It was pretty cool really. Anyhow, I was sitting next to this Asian guy I obviously didn't know, and being myself, I started talking to him. Turns out he wasn't Japanese at all- he was Taiwanese. Go figuree. His name's the best part: Lin Hei-Keng. Freaking awesome. He had come to Minnesota to study ESL for a month. Sounds cool to me =]
And it was pretty awesome how he could read Chinese kanji better than our alphabet. I still have trouble wrapping my mind around that concept.
I wrote his name in Japanese Katakana (how weird is that, me teaching an Asian how to write his name in Japanese) and he showed me how to write Chris in Taiwanese. Nice trade-off =]


So then finally, after 15 hours of flight, we arrived at Kansai International about 30 hours we left...crazy time change. So pretty much for me, the whole morning of August 5th did not exist...and you guys are currently living that morning. That's too weird. This airport is pretty huge though. As testimony to that, I'm in a hotel that's in the airport.

So I got here, came to my room, and looked around see what there was around here. Actually, I should mention the people here. They're so incredible. Seriously, they're all really nice and help you around when you don't have a clue what's going on. I've been smiling a lot, and that's a pretty universal message.
I like it here a lot.

I went out to eat, and got some beef cutlet sandwich. It was pretty awesome, actually, even though the beef was slightly rarer than I would have suggested. I just closed my eyes and savored it.
Oh, and drinks. I got a Coke, and guess what? I got a little 180 mL glass bottle of it. For those of you
who can't grasp how much that is...think of it this way. A regular soda can is 355 mL. So yeah, about half a can.
I managed. The worst part about dinner was actually being alone and seeing everyone with their friends and family. the rest of the day I'd managed to have someone with me but not this time. I can't wait to meet my host family.

Anyhow, I got to the counter: 2,200 yen. WHAT?!?
Okay, okay, I'm kidding, I understood the number. To those not in the know: 1 dollar equals approximately 100 yen.
Thus, 2,200 yen= 22 bucks. Still not cheap, but not too bad either. It was a nice place with good food. No complaints.

After that, I just kind of walked around the airport, listening and taking it all in. It was really cool just to hear everyone. I had some funny stories, like walking into a store and buying "water" only to find out it definitely isn't plain water. Knowing my luck and Japanese proficiency, it's probably like birth control pill water and now I'll never have children. Whatever. I paid 200 yen for it, I'm not gonna go cry about it.

OH! The room! Yeah, it's pretty normal, minus the high tech stuff. Here's the rundown of what I've seen so far in there. First of all there's this water boiling thing right next to the TV. I don't know why, maybe to make tea? Beats me. But I was just fooling around with it, when of course, a bunch of hot water just sprays onto the wooden desk. I got a towel pretty quick and cleaned it up.
But I felt like Wall-E, being curious and pushing things and having weird things happen XD.

And then the bed. It's a normal bed, really: no tatami mats here.
But on the headboard, or dashboard, or whatever it's called there's this control panel (c ontrol panel? Man I'm a computer geek.) and on it there's controls for like all the different lights, and night lights, and TV, and air conditioning, and alarm clock and everything. It was pretty cool.

And now of course, the best part. The one you've been waiting for: the bathroom. Alright, first of all, there's a volume control on the wall for the TV, which is kind of random, and yet awesome. You can listen to the news from the toilet.
Go figure.
But then, yes; you knew it was coming.
The toilet.

And it's crazy power functions. I'll admit it, I tried it, I had to. And I'll just say that having your toilet squirt water into your butt is one of the weirdest sensations I have yet known.
But hey, it was cool.
Everything's been cool here.






Yep, alright, well it's past 10 PM, and I'm suffering major jet lag here and have to get up tomorrow by 8 to actually fly into Asahikawa. I'm excited.

I'll write you guys when I get to that point.
Thanks so much, Sean, and everyone else who's been reading my blogs. Let me know what you think: comment me every now and then. I'd really appreciate it, guys.
Till next time, take care.