Thursday, October 02, 2003
I arrived!
Ok, I was going to start this last night, but I ended up going to bed instead. Therefore, I’ll talk about “yesterday” first. I got up on Tuesday at 6:00 AM, and went to the airport with my family (well, my brother and my parents anyway). I got my tickets and gave them my bags. They said they’d checked my bags all the way to Sendai, but that I would have to check in again in Narita (Tokyo airport) for my flight to Sendai. We took some pictures, and then I got in line to go through security, since the line had grown to reach all the way to the baggage claim area. When I went through security, they took me aside and checked me with a magnetic wand. They then searched my backpack but, of course, found nothing to detain me further. Of all the airports I’ve been in the last few years, Madison by far has been the most concerned about security. I haven’t had nearly as much trouble going through security in Dallas, Chicago (both O’Hare and Midway), Narita, etc. Anyway, I then went to my gate, and waited. They started boarding about 10 minutes late, because the plane we were flying down to Chicago didn’t arrive until that time.
The trip down was quite quick. After only a minute or two in the air, they said we could use electronic devices, so I took out my iPod and started listening to some music. Only a few songs later I looked out of the window, and saw the Chicago skyline. I think it only took about 20 minutes to get from Madison to above Chicago. It took us about another 20 minutes to circle down and land at O’Hare. There I discovered that I had to leave the secure area to get to the international terminal. I found it without too much trouble, but when I tried to go through security they said that I needed to check in again. Evidently even though American Airlines (AA) had printed up my ticket and was jointly operating the flight, I had to go to the counter and get the Japan Airlines (JAL) version of my ticket. That done, I went through security in about 30 seconds, plus the time it took to put stuff back in my pockets. They didn’t even search my backpack (I had my hard drive, iPod, headphones, cables, PS controller, etc. in it, so I was expecting to have it searched everywhere). I ate a few chocolate chip cookies my mom made while I waited to board the flight to Japan.
The flight to Japan was on a Boeing 747-400 jet. Luckily, I had a window seat. Unfortunately, the location of my seat didn’t match the place the web site said it would be. I ended up getting a great view of the wing outside my window, but not much else. With my backpack under the seat in front of me, there wasn’t much room to put my feet anywhere. It was pretty cramped, and they’d installed life jacket boxes under the seats so that you couldn’t put you feet under your own seat at all. All of the stewardesses seemed to be Japanese, as well as most of the passengers. They spoke to the couple sitting next to me in Japanese, but always spoke to me in English. All of the announcements were made in Japanese and English, and a few of them were then made in what sounded to me like Chinese. The in-flight entertainment was quite nice. They had an LCD screen in the back of each seat, and a remote control attached to the arm of the seat. The remote could be turned sideways, and used as a SNES controller. It had all of the SNES buttons on it (D-pad, A, B, X, Y, Start, Select, L, and R). You could also alternate the language between English and Japanese. There were 4 modes that the system could be in: Menu, Movie, Audio, and Game. I didn’t ever try Game, but the other 3 were pretty good. Menu had 3 channels you could switch to. The first was what they displayed on the big screens (news from Japanese TV, various procedures, advertisements for Duty Free goods that were, I thought, extremely expensive. A tie for 10,000 yen?). The second channel had flight status information (a map of where we were, stats. like the temperature outside, distance traveled/left to go, time left, airspeed, etc.). The third channel was the outside camera. During takeoff and landing, this showed what was in front of the plane, and the rest of the flight it showed what was underneath. This was nice, because I couldn’t see all that much from my window (although most of the time all you could see was a white screen, since most of the flight we had clouds under us). The Movie mode let you watch movies. They had 12 or so movies playing, and you could just flip through them as if you were watching TV. Unfortunately, it was fairly hard to catch the beginning of a movie, because they just had the movies looping on their channels. As soon as it ended they started it again, so unless you got really lucky you had to watch the end of it before the beginning. I ended up watching “The Core” and “What a Girl Wants”. Both of them I started in the middle and watched until they came back to where I’d started watching. They weren’t all that bad, but I wouldn’t exactly recommend them either. “The Core” seemed pretty stupid and wasn’t believable, and “What a Girl Wants” was just another chick flick, although I think I liked it better overall than “The Core.” The Audio mode had 16 audio channels, most of which were Japanese. Except for the two or three that were Japanese comedy skits, all the channels were music, unlike some flights I’ve been on where one of the channels lets you listen to the pilots and the tower talking with each other.
They came through several times with drinks. I got water the first time, and apple juice the other times. Some of the other options were coffee, tea, and beer. They also came through several times with a teapot, but I didn’t get any tea (I wish I had just for the experience. Perhaps I’ll have the chance to on the way back). Near the beginning of the flight they also gave us a bag of Japanese snacks, which was pretty good. When we were approximately over the Wisconsin or Minnesota and Canada border (we flew over Canada and Alaska) they gave us our first meal. It consisted of a salad, banana pudding, about 4 cooked vegetables (piece of carrot, one of cauliflower, etc.), some sort of Japanese thing (it was like several pieces of bread sitting in a thin sauce), and either some sort of shrimp dish or chicken teriyaki. I got the chicken, and it seemed like it was about equal parts skin and meat. Not very tasty, but I ate just about everything since it was already the afternoon and all I’d had since breakfast was the cookies and the Japanese snack food. Shortly after the meal, they turned all the lights off and made everyone close their window shades. Some people slept, but I was in the middle of watching my movies, and anyway the lady next to me had her reading light on. After my movies I listened to some music on the Kid’s music channel. It had a few international kids songs sung in Japanese, and then anime theme songs, some of which I recognized :)
I tried sleeping, but I don’t think I was very successful. I was too cramped to get comfortable. Also, the air was EXTREMELY dry. My throat was always dry (even though I was drinking from my water bottle), and my snot was drying in my nose, which was pretty uncomfortable. Also, I’d been told that the plane would be fairly cold, but I found that having my sweat shirt on was too hot, so I ended up holding my winter coat, my sweat shirt, and the plane blanket on my lap.
After a while, they turned on the lights, and started playing an in-flight stretches and exercise tape. A few people around me followed along, but I think most were watching movies. They then came by and served “sandwiches.” Everyone got two “sandwiches.” One may have been ham with mayonnaise or something like that, and the other may have been egg salad. I’m pretty sure the second one had onions in it. The reason I’m putting sandwiches in quotes was because of how small these things were. They were about 3 inches long, 1 inch thick, and 1.5 inches wide. About 2-3 bites for each sandwich.
After a while they turned out the lights again, and I once again tried to sleep. I think I may have dozed a bit, but I’m not really sure. By that time I wasn’t feeling all that tired anymore. After a few hours they fed us another meal. This one had Oreos, lettuce, strawberry yogurt, canned fruit, and a cross between ravioli and lasagna. It looked like lasagna when I first saw it, but they’d taken the noodles, put a bit of meat in the center of each, and then pinched the noodle closed so that it looked sort of like an octopus. I suppose this was to make it easier to each with chopsticks. They provided chopsticks, a metal spoon and fork, and a plastic knife for each meal. I used the fork and spoon. I ate the whole meal, even though I didn’t feel hungry. Most of the flight I’d had a slight headache, and was feeling pretty tired (it’s about a 13 hour flight).
Flying into Japan wasn’t nearly as much fun as I’d expected. All I was from my window were roads and fields. I couldn’t see too well because of the smog and the wing, and didn’t ever see anything that looked like it might be Mt. Fuji. Also, I’d started feeling a bit upset to my stomach, and ended up throwing up about 5 minutes before we landed, so I was a bit occupied with that and may have missed seeing something interesting outside. I had to wait until almost everyone was off the plane before the stewardess came and took my airsickness bag. There was no way to seal the bag, and it didn’t have a bottom that you could put it on (it was sort of like a popcorn bag before you pop the corn), so I had to give it to her before I could collect my stuff and head out. Once out (I got into the airport at about 3:15 PM local time), I had to wait in line for Immigration for about 1.5 hours. The line was about twice as long as their barriers were, so for the first half we were just snaked around the room following the person in front and hoping no one cut. Once I got to the counter it only took about a minute for the guy to stamp my passport and send me through. There were tons of Canadians there who’d come in on another flight.
I was told that AA had been wrong when they told me my bags were checked to Sendai. I had to get them from the baggage claim and go through customs. I filled out the customs form, gave it to the guy, and he looked in one of my suitcases for about 2 seconds and then waved me through. I could have brought in anything I wanted and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have seen it. I’d been prepared to show the receipt for my laptop, the copies of my prescriptions for my medicine, and things like that, so this was a bit anticlimactic. I then went to the domestic terminal to check in for my flight to Sendai. While I was in line, they came by asking if anyone was on my flight. I said yes, and they said it was overbooked (50 seats for 56 people). They wanted me to take the train instead, but I told them that wouldn’t work too well since I was meeting the rest of my group at the Sendai airport. Then they asked if I’d be willing to let them have a delivery service deliver my bags tomorrow, and I figured I’d be ok without them for a day and that they’d give me a plane ticket if I said yes, so I did. They gave me seat 2A. I hope my bags arrive promptly today, because I don’t have any clothes, towel, shampoo, etc.
The flight from Sendai was about 10 min. late in boarding (boarded at 6:00 PM), and then taxied (not just waited on the runway, but moving the whole time) for about 15 min. before taking off. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, but I did watch all the lights go by. I was on the land side, so I saw the coast outside my window. On the other side I would have just seen the ocean. The flight was completely full, probably due to the fact that it was actually a combined flight between 2 airlines (ANA and JAL or something like that) and because there were about 20 kids from Brazil on it. They were all the same age, and were all wearing some sort of sports uniform (probably soccer). We arrived in Sendai at 7:20 PM, where I introduced myself to Jeff, Monique, and a third guy (Jim?) who were all also part of JYPE. We met up with the rest of the group (there were 12 of us there), and then took the bus they provided to the International House. It took about an hour to get there from the airport. Several other people also are having their luggage delivered today.
Once we got to the International house, they gave us lots of handouts. They gave a brief tour of how things worked, but the people giving it didn’t really know where anything was or how it worked. One guy, the director of the program, doesn’t know much English, and so all he did was slowly read the instructions off of a sheet he gave us. There’s a group here (they call themselves “Group Mori”) that help’s International Students. They provided a bag with a city map, a bus map, a towel, a bar of soap, a plate, and a tea cup for each of us. They’ll be helping us set up our bank accounts and filling out all the alien registration paperwork tomorrow. I was glad to have the towel and soap last night, because my luggage isn’t here yet so I don’t have any of that stuff. Luckily, I was late packing my tooth brushing stuff when I left Madison, so that stuff was in my backpack.
I met 3 guys from my floor, all from the US. Norm is from Michigan Tech, John is from California, and I’m not sure where Joey is from. I’ve had the most Japanese of the four of us. The two things we talked about were getting a video game setup going, and trying to figure out internet access. Evidently the reason we can’t get DSL here is that the international house has 16 phone lines that they share between all the residents, and this apparently makes it impossible. I’ll probably try to look into getting cable if that’s available and I can’t get a decent connection on campus. It’s going to be hard not to have internet access at home, but I guess I’ll manage somehow.
I’m renting bedding for this month, so at least I had that. However, it’s Japanese stuff, and I’m not really sure how all the stuff is supposed to be used. There are 2 fitted sheet type of things, 2 pillow cases, 2 flat sheets, a big heavy thing, a narrower and longer heavy thing, a small fuzzy blanket, and a small pillow filled with beans (or something that feels like beans, anyway. They’re pretty hard and not very comfortable). The fitted sheet thing fits the big heavy thing well, and the pillow case fits the pillow OK, but I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do after that. I’ll have to ask someone if they know how all this is supposed to work.
I didn’t get to bed until about 30 hours after I’d gotten up in Madison. Hope I can recover my sleep quickly.
Well, that’s about it for yesterday. Today I woke up at 7:30, and started writing this journal. At quarter to 10 I went to the lobby to see about the bike sale that Group Mori was holding. While waiting I looked at the bulletin board (there were lots of people trying to sell their phone lines) and read a pamphlet about Sendai. At about 10:30 I was still waiting for any evidence of this bike sale, so I asked at the front desk, and discovered that I’d completely missed the fact that the sale was Thursday Oct. 9, not today Thursday. The date was prominent on the poster and the handout I had about it, so I’m not sure how I missed that.
Anyway, I came back to my room, and heard someone inside. I went to open the door, and at that moment the door opened. There was a man there who said he was the gas man, and he said that he’d checked my connection and that it was fine. He showed my how I’m supposed to use the water heater and the stove, and included a lot more information about how to do it than I’d gotten last night, even though he took about a third of the time. I guess that goes to show that the best way to learn is to be taught by someone who knows how to use it. Anyway, he asked me if speaking Japanese was OK, and I said yes, so the only English he used was when he said “Thank you very much” when he left. He had me sign a form, but I have no idea what the form said, since my name was the only thing in English on it. I’m assuming it was the contract for the gas service.
My luggage is supposed to be delivered between 10 AM and noon, and it’s 11 AM now, so I’m going to wait a little bit longer and then go up and see if it’s there. After that, I’ll probably see about getting some food, since I haven’t really had anything to eat since breakfast on Tuesday morning (my throw up smelled like my first meal on the plane, so I’m not sure if I got anything out of either of them).
The trip down was quite quick. After only a minute or two in the air, they said we could use electronic devices, so I took out my iPod and started listening to some music. Only a few songs later I looked out of the window, and saw the Chicago skyline. I think it only took about 20 minutes to get from Madison to above Chicago. It took us about another 20 minutes to circle down and land at O’Hare. There I discovered that I had to leave the secure area to get to the international terminal. I found it without too much trouble, but when I tried to go through security they said that I needed to check in again. Evidently even though American Airlines (AA) had printed up my ticket and was jointly operating the flight, I had to go to the counter and get the Japan Airlines (JAL) version of my ticket. That done, I went through security in about 30 seconds, plus the time it took to put stuff back in my pockets. They didn’t even search my backpack (I had my hard drive, iPod, headphones, cables, PS controller, etc. in it, so I was expecting to have it searched everywhere). I ate a few chocolate chip cookies my mom made while I waited to board the flight to Japan.
The flight to Japan was on a Boeing 747-400 jet. Luckily, I had a window seat. Unfortunately, the location of my seat didn’t match the place the web site said it would be. I ended up getting a great view of the wing outside my window, but not much else. With my backpack under the seat in front of me, there wasn’t much room to put my feet anywhere. It was pretty cramped, and they’d installed life jacket boxes under the seats so that you couldn’t put you feet under your own seat at all. All of the stewardesses seemed to be Japanese, as well as most of the passengers. They spoke to the couple sitting next to me in Japanese, but always spoke to me in English. All of the announcements were made in Japanese and English, and a few of them were then made in what sounded to me like Chinese. The in-flight entertainment was quite nice. They had an LCD screen in the back of each seat, and a remote control attached to the arm of the seat. The remote could be turned sideways, and used as a SNES controller. It had all of the SNES buttons on it (D-pad, A, B, X, Y, Start, Select, L, and R). You could also alternate the language between English and Japanese. There were 4 modes that the system could be in: Menu, Movie, Audio, and Game. I didn’t ever try Game, but the other 3 were pretty good. Menu had 3 channels you could switch to. The first was what they displayed on the big screens (news from Japanese TV, various procedures, advertisements for Duty Free goods that were, I thought, extremely expensive. A tie for 10,000 yen?). The second channel had flight status information (a map of where we were, stats. like the temperature outside, distance traveled/left to go, time left, airspeed, etc.). The third channel was the outside camera. During takeoff and landing, this showed what was in front of the plane, and the rest of the flight it showed what was underneath. This was nice, because I couldn’t see all that much from my window (although most of the time all you could see was a white screen, since most of the flight we had clouds under us). The Movie mode let you watch movies. They had 12 or so movies playing, and you could just flip through them as if you were watching TV. Unfortunately, it was fairly hard to catch the beginning of a movie, because they just had the movies looping on their channels. As soon as it ended they started it again, so unless you got really lucky you had to watch the end of it before the beginning. I ended up watching “The Core” and “What a Girl Wants”. Both of them I started in the middle and watched until they came back to where I’d started watching. They weren’t all that bad, but I wouldn’t exactly recommend them either. “The Core” seemed pretty stupid and wasn’t believable, and “What a Girl Wants” was just another chick flick, although I think I liked it better overall than “The Core.” The Audio mode had 16 audio channels, most of which were Japanese. Except for the two or three that were Japanese comedy skits, all the channels were music, unlike some flights I’ve been on where one of the channels lets you listen to the pilots and the tower talking with each other.
They came through several times with drinks. I got water the first time, and apple juice the other times. Some of the other options were coffee, tea, and beer. They also came through several times with a teapot, but I didn’t get any tea (I wish I had just for the experience. Perhaps I’ll have the chance to on the way back). Near the beginning of the flight they also gave us a bag of Japanese snacks, which was pretty good. When we were approximately over the Wisconsin or Minnesota and Canada border (we flew over Canada and Alaska) they gave us our first meal. It consisted of a salad, banana pudding, about 4 cooked vegetables (piece of carrot, one of cauliflower, etc.), some sort of Japanese thing (it was like several pieces of bread sitting in a thin sauce), and either some sort of shrimp dish or chicken teriyaki. I got the chicken, and it seemed like it was about equal parts skin and meat. Not very tasty, but I ate just about everything since it was already the afternoon and all I’d had since breakfast was the cookies and the Japanese snack food. Shortly after the meal, they turned all the lights off and made everyone close their window shades. Some people slept, but I was in the middle of watching my movies, and anyway the lady next to me had her reading light on. After my movies I listened to some music on the Kid’s music channel. It had a few international kids songs sung in Japanese, and then anime theme songs, some of which I recognized :)
I tried sleeping, but I don’t think I was very successful. I was too cramped to get comfortable. Also, the air was EXTREMELY dry. My throat was always dry (even though I was drinking from my water bottle), and my snot was drying in my nose, which was pretty uncomfortable. Also, I’d been told that the plane would be fairly cold, but I found that having my sweat shirt on was too hot, so I ended up holding my winter coat, my sweat shirt, and the plane blanket on my lap.
After a while, they turned on the lights, and started playing an in-flight stretches and exercise tape. A few people around me followed along, but I think most were watching movies. They then came by and served “sandwiches.” Everyone got two “sandwiches.” One may have been ham with mayonnaise or something like that, and the other may have been egg salad. I’m pretty sure the second one had onions in it. The reason I’m putting sandwiches in quotes was because of how small these things were. They were about 3 inches long, 1 inch thick, and 1.5 inches wide. About 2-3 bites for each sandwich.
After a while they turned out the lights again, and I once again tried to sleep. I think I may have dozed a bit, but I’m not really sure. By that time I wasn’t feeling all that tired anymore. After a few hours they fed us another meal. This one had Oreos, lettuce, strawberry yogurt, canned fruit, and a cross between ravioli and lasagna. It looked like lasagna when I first saw it, but they’d taken the noodles, put a bit of meat in the center of each, and then pinched the noodle closed so that it looked sort of like an octopus. I suppose this was to make it easier to each with chopsticks. They provided chopsticks, a metal spoon and fork, and a plastic knife for each meal. I used the fork and spoon. I ate the whole meal, even though I didn’t feel hungry. Most of the flight I’d had a slight headache, and was feeling pretty tired (it’s about a 13 hour flight).
Flying into Japan wasn’t nearly as much fun as I’d expected. All I was from my window were roads and fields. I couldn’t see too well because of the smog and the wing, and didn’t ever see anything that looked like it might be Mt. Fuji. Also, I’d started feeling a bit upset to my stomach, and ended up throwing up about 5 minutes before we landed, so I was a bit occupied with that and may have missed seeing something interesting outside. I had to wait until almost everyone was off the plane before the stewardess came and took my airsickness bag. There was no way to seal the bag, and it didn’t have a bottom that you could put it on (it was sort of like a popcorn bag before you pop the corn), so I had to give it to her before I could collect my stuff and head out. Once out (I got into the airport at about 3:15 PM local time), I had to wait in line for Immigration for about 1.5 hours. The line was about twice as long as their barriers were, so for the first half we were just snaked around the room following the person in front and hoping no one cut. Once I got to the counter it only took about a minute for the guy to stamp my passport and send me through. There were tons of Canadians there who’d come in on another flight.
I was told that AA had been wrong when they told me my bags were checked to Sendai. I had to get them from the baggage claim and go through customs. I filled out the customs form, gave it to the guy, and he looked in one of my suitcases for about 2 seconds and then waved me through. I could have brought in anything I wanted and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have seen it. I’d been prepared to show the receipt for my laptop, the copies of my prescriptions for my medicine, and things like that, so this was a bit anticlimactic. I then went to the domestic terminal to check in for my flight to Sendai. While I was in line, they came by asking if anyone was on my flight. I said yes, and they said it was overbooked (50 seats for 56 people). They wanted me to take the train instead, but I told them that wouldn’t work too well since I was meeting the rest of my group at the Sendai airport. Then they asked if I’d be willing to let them have a delivery service deliver my bags tomorrow, and I figured I’d be ok without them for a day and that they’d give me a plane ticket if I said yes, so I did. They gave me seat 2A. I hope my bags arrive promptly today, because I don’t have any clothes, towel, shampoo, etc.
The flight from Sendai was about 10 min. late in boarding (boarded at 6:00 PM), and then taxied (not just waited on the runway, but moving the whole time) for about 15 min. before taking off. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, but I did watch all the lights go by. I was on the land side, so I saw the coast outside my window. On the other side I would have just seen the ocean. The flight was completely full, probably due to the fact that it was actually a combined flight between 2 airlines (ANA and JAL or something like that) and because there were about 20 kids from Brazil on it. They were all the same age, and were all wearing some sort of sports uniform (probably soccer). We arrived in Sendai at 7:20 PM, where I introduced myself to Jeff, Monique, and a third guy (Jim?) who were all also part of JYPE. We met up with the rest of the group (there were 12 of us there), and then took the bus they provided to the International House. It took about an hour to get there from the airport. Several other people also are having their luggage delivered today.
Once we got to the International house, they gave us lots of handouts. They gave a brief tour of how things worked, but the people giving it didn’t really know where anything was or how it worked. One guy, the director of the program, doesn’t know much English, and so all he did was slowly read the instructions off of a sheet he gave us. There’s a group here (they call themselves “Group Mori”) that help’s International Students. They provided a bag with a city map, a bus map, a towel, a bar of soap, a plate, and a tea cup for each of us. They’ll be helping us set up our bank accounts and filling out all the alien registration paperwork tomorrow. I was glad to have the towel and soap last night, because my luggage isn’t here yet so I don’t have any of that stuff. Luckily, I was late packing my tooth brushing stuff when I left Madison, so that stuff was in my backpack.
I met 3 guys from my floor, all from the US. Norm is from Michigan Tech, John is from California, and I’m not sure where Joey is from. I’ve had the most Japanese of the four of us. The two things we talked about were getting a video game setup going, and trying to figure out internet access. Evidently the reason we can’t get DSL here is that the international house has 16 phone lines that they share between all the residents, and this apparently makes it impossible. I’ll probably try to look into getting cable if that’s available and I can’t get a decent connection on campus. It’s going to be hard not to have internet access at home, but I guess I’ll manage somehow.
I’m renting bedding for this month, so at least I had that. However, it’s Japanese stuff, and I’m not really sure how all the stuff is supposed to be used. There are 2 fitted sheet type of things, 2 pillow cases, 2 flat sheets, a big heavy thing, a narrower and longer heavy thing, a small fuzzy blanket, and a small pillow filled with beans (or something that feels like beans, anyway. They’re pretty hard and not very comfortable). The fitted sheet thing fits the big heavy thing well, and the pillow case fits the pillow OK, but I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do after that. I’ll have to ask someone if they know how all this is supposed to work.
I didn’t get to bed until about 30 hours after I’d gotten up in Madison. Hope I can recover my sleep quickly.
Well, that’s about it for yesterday. Today I woke up at 7:30, and started writing this journal. At quarter to 10 I went to the lobby to see about the bike sale that Group Mori was holding. While waiting I looked at the bulletin board (there were lots of people trying to sell their phone lines) and read a pamphlet about Sendai. At about 10:30 I was still waiting for any evidence of this bike sale, so I asked at the front desk, and discovered that I’d completely missed the fact that the sale was Thursday Oct. 9, not today Thursday. The date was prominent on the poster and the handout I had about it, so I’m not sure how I missed that.
Anyway, I came back to my room, and heard someone inside. I went to open the door, and at that moment the door opened. There was a man there who said he was the gas man, and he said that he’d checked my connection and that it was fine. He showed my how I’m supposed to use the water heater and the stove, and included a lot more information about how to do it than I’d gotten last night, even though he took about a third of the time. I guess that goes to show that the best way to learn is to be taught by someone who knows how to use it. Anyway, he asked me if speaking Japanese was OK, and I said yes, so the only English he used was when he said “Thank you very much” when he left. He had me sign a form, but I have no idea what the form said, since my name was the only thing in English on it. I’m assuming it was the contract for the gas service.
My luggage is supposed to be delivered between 10 AM and noon, and it’s 11 AM now, so I’m going to wait a little bit longer and then go up and see if it’s there. After that, I’ll probably see about getting some food, since I haven’t really had anything to eat since breakfast on Tuesday morning (my throw up smelled like my first meal on the plane, so I’m not sure if I got anything out of either of them).
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