¤_¤ in Japan

Well, a little background to Monday's trip. Sunday I decided that it would be best to pull an all nighter and thus dodging the jet lag when flying into Tokyo, I pretty much followed through with that plan and got two hours of sleep. Monday I got up around 8 and took care of some last minute packing, and dropped my car off at a friends house and then was driven to the airport. The guys got breakfast in the airport before boarding the plane to Chicago and I promptly passed out on that plane.

We landed in Chicago and transfered flights to JAL flight 003 nonstop from Chicago to Tokyo, finding terminal 5 where the JAL planes left from took a lot longer then I expected, but the walk was nice.... There's Brontosaurus skeleton in the O'Hare, that blew my mind. We went through the same security dance that we did before in Burlington and waited to board our flight to Tokyo, as we were waiting we went over the days itinerary. The plane itself was a standard 747 but it had external cameras that kept me captivated as we took of and started flying as well as when we were landing. I've always watched the take off and landing via the windows, but I've never seend it from the pilot's perspective.

I don't have much to say for the flight except that I slept for a lot of it and woke up to a few different things; one was my hands kept going numb in my lap so I had to shake them a bit, another was when the flight attendants were hading anything out- i guess they must have hit me in the face or something- and the last was when I started to fidget in the direction of my friend Sam and lean on him. Other then that it was a standard international flight, cramped leg room, little kids crying, and a lot of people taking advantage of the free alcohol that was being served.

When we touched down in Narita airport and disembarked from the plane, we noticed that everyhing was kept immaculately clean, it was kind of weird. I'm used to flying into Newark Int'l and JFK and there is always some kind of garbage on the ground, but there was nothing. We passed though customs and started to change over money and I was asked by my sensei to ask the people at the information counter where we could rent cellphones and I thought to myself that this would be the perfect time to start speaking Japanese, because I had just finished talking about cellphones in my Japanese conversation classes. I walked up to the counter and was about to ask about the phones when I was greated with a "Yes?" It didn't phase me it just disappointed me and reminded me of my trips to France in highschool when I took French. The natives can tell when a foreigner is going to talk to them and they default to your native tongue, which in my mind defeats the purpose of studying a foreign language. So I asked about the phones and then realized that when I write in my blog I probably wasn't going to be putting a lot of new grammer in it because I've been studying the language for five years now and the classes have always been structured towards helping you be a better tourist or exchange student and get you by on the basics, however there should be a few new words or phrases that accompany these entries every day.

We left the airport and headed towards the train/subway system and they look and feel exactly like the subway systems in New York City... well not look like the subways in NYC, things are much cleaner in Japan and every other city in the world. We train hopped for the next hour or so and walked 10 minutes towards the hotel, got settled and then a few of us headed out to get dinner, which leads me to the highlight of day 1. Ramen ya's are pretty neat little places to go when you want good, cheap food. Now I'm going to fall over and go to sleep.

火曜日　５－１６
シカゴから東京までのびんは１３時間くらいでそれはとてもつまらなかったです。飛行機の席が小さいのでいろいろな事ができませんでした。映画を見て、寝て、友達と話しましたけど、そのあとでも６時間ぐらいひまがあります。

お茶の水について、ホテルまであるいて端をわたりました。端にのむうに秋葉原が見えました。私の部屋は小さいかったです。去年の夏休みロンドンへ行きました。ロンドンのホテルの部屋も小さいかったです。東京の部屋はよかったです。火曜日の晩にらーめん屋へ行って、ぴりかららーめんを注文しました。ぴりかららーめんはこうしんりょうがきいていました。友達と日本の文化について話しました。そして、皆さんは何をしたいか話しました。私は秋葉原を見て、二人の友達を遊びた買ったので秋葉原に行って、友達に会いました。