Well, I made it!

After one of the longest plane rides of my entire life, I arrived in Tokyo at 4:30 on Thursday, therefore skipping basically an entire day. Tough, huh? I was lucky, though, because I sat next to this very nice Japanese man who talked to me about Japanese politics, baseball, etc., or at least that's what I THINK he talked about, seeing as though it was all in Japanese and fast. But I knew I heard the word "yakyuu", which means baseball, and the rest is a bit fuzzy. His English was not very good, but I offered him my Sports Illustrated to read on the plane and he seemed to be "reading it", though it kind of worried me when he was moving his finger right to left across the page. We also started talking about the lack of snow in the States and I mentioned that the West actually had a ton of snow, especially in Colorado. My Japanese companion, perhaps as a way of saying "I KNOW ENGLISH STUFF" proceeded to name pretty much all of the other 49 states. I lost track after Idaho.

So then I arrived, and let me just say, Japan hits you right in the face with the futuristic nonsense right from the start. Narita Airport is beautiful. It's impeccably clean and has literally hundreds of shops, including, yes, a Hello Kitty store and a place that was called "American Sweat". I didn't venture in there.

I met up with a few Temple students and we hopped on a bus for the 90-minute to our dorm in Tokyo. The Japanese highway system is crazy. First, they have these signs that have a huge maze of roads all over them, some lit up and others not. No idea what that meant. There were also spinning neon lights all over the road, and two huge ferris wheels that were just -- there.

My first impression of Tokyo? NEON. What else? Everywhere you look there was neon. I even saw a sign for a pregnancy clinic with the lights in neon. Wouldn't that be fun to see in the States? The other first impression I got was HOLY CRAP VENDING MACHINES. They are literally everywhere. We drove by this huge rice patty and right next to this dilapidated old shack was a vending machine, which drove me to wonder that if I bought something from that particular machine, if I was the first, or perhaps second person ever to even touch that thing. And the vending machines don't just sell soda, no. They sell hot coffee, ice cream cones, every type of tea imaginable, and yes, iPods. Imagine sticking $300 into a vending machine. Fun, huh?

So we arrived at the dorm, I met a bunch of people, and literally just unpacked and (tried) to go to bed. The jet lag has been pretty bad so far.

Today we had some orientation stuff followed by some free time at Roppongi, this ultra-upscale, futuristic shopping mall. But before I get to that, let me just say that the most fascinating thing so far has certainly been the subway system. The subway is SO consistently on time that if the subway is late for some reason, there is a guy standing outside handing out "late notes" for businessmen to give to their bosses because they won't believe their excuse otherwise. They are also incredibly silent. No one talks. Which of course didn't matter when 70 stupid Americans boarded and shouted to each other like we were over exuberant parents yelling at our kids at one of their Rec soccer games.

All in all, the first day and a half here has been super exciting and super tiring. We have another day of sightseeing tomorrow and then a few free days before classes start on Tuesday. Check out my pictures on Flickr, I uploaded a few. And for you Facebook users, I uploaded a bunch more than Flickr because it's a lot faster to do so.

Jaa mata!

ENGRISH SIGHTING: A store in Roppongi Hills was named "White Trash Charms Japan"