hi, i'm jenn

Special thanks goes out to those that stopped by on Tuesday night. Thanks to them, I had ample sudokus, music and sugar for the flight over. Not to mention a super fun game for ages 3+ that is a choking hazard. And my clothes were in a suitcase that fit.

I didn’t sleep on Tuesday night – was getting stuff together until we left at about 6:20 AM.

My mom said to Abbie earlier in the evening that she knew that I would leave something (at least 1 thing, that is) at home that she would have to ship it to me (and shipping to japan ain’t cheap). Why are moms always right? I left something — something very important. Tears in the car (I was overtired, okay?) but it might actually be a blessing in disguise… As mattycakes once told me: if it can be solved with money, it’s not a real problem.

One day I’m going to master the art of packing. Clearly it’s not going to be experience that gets me past this point. Ritalin perhaps?

Guess in the comments what I forgot. First person to guess correctly gets a prize! I swear.

Okay, moving on. Got to the airport, and went to the wrong terminal. Once we shuttled to the right terminal, I found out one of my bags was over the 75lb weight restriction, so had to redistribute my stuff. Blah.

The flight from Toronto to Vancouver was totally uneventful. I slept for the whole flight, save for when the kid behind me was kicking. That puts me on Japan time — my flight was at 9AM, making me sleep from 2-7AM japanese time.

I was amazed at the diversity among the passengers on the flight from Vancouver to Osaka. When Lori and I flew from Detroit, it felt like we were two of maybe a dozen non-Asian people. I mean, we walked onto the plane where most people were already seated, and burst out laughing. This time it felt like any other flight.

I was sitting beside a woman around my age named Marie from Quebec. We started talking before takeoff, and didn’t stop until after the second movie finished. Between the two of us, we had 2 glasses of wine, 1 vodka orange, 1 vodka coke, 5 bloody marys and 1 bloody ceasar. International flights are fun!

After a nap, and the 3rd movie, we landed here in Osaka. Anyway, Marie lives in Osaka right now, so hopefully we’ll be able to hook up again before I head home. Oooh! I saw Fuji-san for the first time! So now that I’ve seen the top, I don’t need to climb it.

And that gets us to the lovely Kansai airport. Got here, went through customs, and checked in for my next flight. It was fantastic — there was a man who insisted on lifting my baggage for the security scan and again for where I had to check it. He told me he likes the Rockies. Heh.

Since then (around 5:00) I’ve done the following:

• called Mika (my host mom) – it was so nice to talk to her, and I can’t wait to visit them!!
• wandered the three floors of the airport and browsed in the many gift shops
• befriended a group of flight attendants who were having beers while waiting for their flight to Okinawa
• indulged in a 15 minute upperback and neck massage
• examined the wax food at all the different food places, tried to read menus (“Bi-Gu-Ma-Ku”), and settled on Udon. yum

I sat down to start learning Hiragana at about 7 (I didn’t make it through my whole to-do list, alright?) and noticed a sign saying it was a wireless zone. FREE WIRELESS! There’s even a desk with a powerbar that I’m sitting and working at. Man, if I only found this out earlier… hehe. Best. Airport. Ever.

There was just an advertisement for Mama Mia on the plasma TV that’s running adverts beside me (well, i think they’re adverts). I couldn’t tell if they were singing in English or in Japanese though the white fringed costumes need no translation.

And that gets you up to date. My flight to Fukuoka is at 8:40PM where I’m crashing for the night, and then on to Nagasaki tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 12th, 2006 at 7:37 pm and is filed under japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.