Chapter 1: Departure and Arrival

OK, so sorry I haven't been updating War Plan Orange. I still don't have a solid internet connection, and I never hold onto a connection long enough to post. But right now I have a pretty slick connection, so we'll get caught up! Still can't do photos, but they'll be up soon enough.

Alright, so after a roughly 14 hour journey, I made it to Japan. Everything went smoothly at Sea-Tac. For those of you who know, the weight was questionable for one of my bags. The weight limit is 70lbs, and this bag was friggin heavy. The tossed it up on the scale... 68.5lbs. Excellent. A sad teary eyed goodbye to my parents, which was expected. I’ll miss them very much. I love my parents, and it’ll be tough to live so far away from them.

US security was a total bitch, and they scratched my iPod pretty good. It works just fine, but there is a big slash across the screen now. I bitched at the guy, but he just gave me some Homeland Security Act disclaimer. I then vowed revenge with the blood of his children. I had a an hour or so before boarding, and decided to go shopping with the $1.75 worth of American money my mom gave me. I got some Reeses Pieces. It’s been 2 days now and I still haven’t opened them.

I don’t sleep on planes. Not that I’m scared of flying, I actually quite like it, but it’s just like, there are so many people around, and people are always moving. So I was awake the entire time. The movie selection was horrible. First up was The Ringer with Johnny Knoxville. I found it horribly offensive. Offensive that is for it’s cinematic value, which is none. Offensive to handicap people? Perhaps. It’s a total rip off of a Southpark episode, which was great. Intead of subjecting myself to anymore of this cinematic monstrosity they call a film, I popped in Apocolypse Now into my laptop. Much better...and that movie is fucking long. I have the redux DVD, which clocks in at just under 4 hours. I also found that the charge on my laptop lasts for just over 4 hours. This cut into the run time of Chicken Little, which I skipped all together, and Aeon Flux, which I skipped as well in favor of listening to some music.

As I write this, I have Tokyo TV on. As they are running through the sponsors for a news program, they have a video of a guy feeding a hippo with a bottle. People think Japanese TV makes no sense probably because they don’t speak Japanese. But I assure you, if you can understand the Japanese, it makes even less sense.

Right. Some 11 hours later, we landed at Narita Airport in Tokyo. Landing went fine. Customs was easy, probably since I have a visa. I met up with some people from the school system, and they popped me onto a bus. The bus was a total pain in the ass. It was comfortable, but slow, and had to go to Tsuchiura before getting to Tsukuba. At Tsukuba, I met a teacher from my school named Steve who took me to my apartment. The station (bus and train) is about a 15 minute walk to my apartment, or about a 5 minute bike ride. Oh yeah, and I bought a bike right away. Right off, Steve asked me to go out to eat with him and some of the other teachers. The other teachers seem pretty cool...most are actually from Scotland. We went to a great yakiniku place. (Grilled beef kinda stuff.) None of them speak Japanese, which I think is odd.

Now on TV there is a guy in a cell phone suite playing some singer girl in some sort of live sized version of air-hockey.

OK, so thats it for now. I know, this entry was a tad boring, but I promise, things will pick up. In a few days I’ll post “Tsukuba Diving,” which will be about the exploration of my neighborhood, and then “14 Seconds Over Shibuya,” where I’ll post a video I recorded at the crossing in Shibuya, which is the busiest intersection in the world. It’s fucking nuts.