A night's view of Tokyo.....

From the plane approaching in Narita airport, I really wish I had a window seat. It was going on 7PM as the plane was trying to land at Narita, but strong winds were creating fierce turbulence like something else. I've been on boats, cars, and roller coasters, and I have never gotten sick by just sitting down and doing nothing, but this turbulence succeeded in every way of making me feel sick. I blame the capacity of the plane to rock in 8 directions in a 3D area (basically since it was in the air, it could rock in every direction.















(Photo courtesy of tsu from wikipedia commons under the free distribution license of GNU)
"It looked something like this, but only with 2 being open at 8PM"

We got to Narita going on 7:30, but the line in immigration was 45 minutes long. It was a long wait to get past immigration, but once you got to the new immigration procedures it was only a 2 minute process. Except for me. Why? Because they expect gaijin to be 5'5" not at 6' or above.


(An immigration officer shows a traveler how to use a digital fingerprint reader at Narita International Airport on Tuesday. AP PHOTO)
"The system includes fingerprinting and picture taking. Apparently a 'really tall machine' would have been out of the Japanese ethic of making things fit evenly and compactly on surfaces."


I think I caused problems when they had to adjust the camera twice to capture my face correctly. Anyway, after that, customs was kind of a joke. Practically just got our bags, gave the customs official our claims ticket that we filled out on the plane, and left for the main entrance. Yoshiko and Brian had been waiting on us for over an hour. We got on the van that was specifically taking us to Hakuoh, and it was a decent 3 hour drive, but Keleih and I were exhausted from the flight. Sleep was nearly impossible on the flight, I had to use a blanket to cover up my eyes from any strands of light and continue listening to the J-Pop/Rock station to block out other crazy sounds.

The night view of Tokyo from the point of the highways was pretty amazing. I heard that Tokyo really isn't a 24 hour town, but just an 8 hour town, but with various things opening and closing within an 8 hour time frame. Anyway, we saw Tokyo tower in the distance and the rainbow bridge with the yugata boats passing buy beneath us.

We got to Oyama around 10PM and since it was too late to go out to eat, we stopped by a convenience store to get some food from there (school was paying for it anyway). Considering it was my first day there, I had no idea what half the food said or was, so in the coming weeks it was going to be a trial. I was surprised that Japanese convenience stores had so much stuff available. Bread, food, snacks, milk, coffee, manga, magazines, porn, and anime figurine model kits are just a few of the available stuff you're able to purchase from a convenience store.

After that, Usui-san dropped me off at my dorm room. I couldn't understand anything my landlord was saying, so I just worked off gestures and kind of followed her lead.



(Front entrance to dorm room)

"It's sad when your arms, not even fully stretched can touch both walls widthwise"

My room was pretty decent to begin with. It has a kitchen, bathroom, bed, desk, fridge and TV. Basically all the comforts of a home. I don't know HOW much Hakuoh is taking the bill on in terms of rent, but it has to be something at least. I basically unpacked a few things, spent a few hours on the computer trying to find a connection to leech off of then went to bed.