Tokyo -1

Hey, everyone, sorry for the delay, here is my first official entry from Japan. I have now been in Japan for almost 24 hours and I will try to talk about what happened so far. Just keep in mind that as I am writing this I am still jet lagged and the only food I had in the last 12 hours is a little bit of toast (I am currently waiting on my food that should be delivered to the Hostel I am at). I apologize that there are no pictures yet, but I promise THEY ARE COMING!

Flight: My Flight on All Nippon airways was OK, as good as a 13 hours and 40 minute flight can be. The service was good, the plane did take off 1 hour behind schedule, but I sort of expect that from JFK. The food did have an interesting Japanese side to it, there was a lot of fish, noodles with seaweed. There were some "rice snacks", that are similar to "chex mix", but apparently contained shrimp and crab oil. Definitely had a fishy taste.

Arrival:When I finally arrived, things did not go as smooth as I hoped (perhaps it was naive of me to believe that they would). Having only gotten 3 hours worth of sleep the night before my flight, and only about 1 hour during the flight I was pretty exhausted. My first action upon arrival was to call my parents. In order to do this I took out my "survival packet" which contained phone numbers, how to call the states, directions. After I called my parents, I lost my packet. I don't know what I did with it, all that I know is that it disapeared between somewhere between the plane and passport control. I don't know where it went. I ended up calling my parents and asking them to look up the phone number, ouf, So thumbs up for them to look it up for me.

Narita Airport Hostel: This was where I stayed the first, the owner picked me up after I called him and took me to the Hostel. Its a relatively small place that only costs about $20 a night with the pick up. The ride to the hostel was my first taste of Japan, driving on the right definitely felt like being in another dimension. The hostel had some interesting people form Italy, US, Indonesia. People in Hostels have a taste for travel so it was interesting to talk to them. The bed was on a traditional Japanese Futon. One note about the owner, thumbs up to him as he runs this Hostel completely alone. This makes a 365 day 24/7 job, no idea how he does it.

To Tokyo: Ok, advice to anyone travling DO NOT DO NOT take more then 1 50 lb bag with you. It will be very difficult to carry 2. I had no trouble buying the tickets for both my train to Tokyo and my Bullet train that I am taking to Akita on Tuesday. One interesting thing on the train station is that as soon as I showed any sign of being confused an attendant would run to me and help. I then had an exsiding 1.5 hour ride in a "subway" type train to Tokyo with 2 50lb bags. My hands were pretty tired during the trip. It was interesting to watch some Japanese people sleeping on the train, some of them had very "intense" expressions. Upon my arrival to Tokyo I had the difficult task of dragging my bags to the Hostel. First, the train station in Tokyo unlike the one in the airport had no elevators. After some struggling with the bags some Japanese men were nice enough of to help with them. ONe thing, the weathere here is humid, according to the Hostel directions that I had, the walk from the station should take 10 minutes. With the bags it took about 1 hour, I had to stop and rest several times, good thing that beverage machines were at every corner, otherwise I was really concerned that I would dehydrated. It was hot. O the positive side, during this walk I did walk through a cool market street, saw some tempeles as well as people wearing traditional Kimonos, "Sweet loli" style and the famous "Sailor school uniform".

Sakura Hostel Asakusa: I am now at Sakura Hostel Asakusa, the place looks pretty nice, as much as I want to go out and look around I am completely exhausted from carrying my bags around and I will probably just rest for a little bit. The fact that I am sitll jet lagged and that I only ate toast probably aren't helping the matter. So I will probably just rest here for another few hours. Ok, To be continued...