Saturday morning bright and early I arrived at Jackson-Hartsfield airport in Atlanta to prepare for an 11:05 flight to Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. The first flight took about 2 hours and was pretty pleasant - I had a window seat and enjoyed looking at the scenery from above. The view brought me to realize how much I love America, and how much I'm going to miss it for the next year. I spent most of the flight listening to my ipod, and I couldn't help but listen to all the songs that have come to define this summer for me (Keller - Freaker by the Speaker, Donna the Buffalo - Each and Every Direction, Old Crow Medicine Show - Wagon Wheel). I was definitely sad to be leaving, but I was equally if not more excited for what lay ahead. I happened to sit next to two pretty cool kids on the flight, a girl named Taylor and a guy named Richard. Richard graduated from UGA, is into a lot of the same music as me and is also a self-described "fest-head." I was sooo glad to find someone with similar tastes!
We had a very short layover in Minneapolis before taking off for Japan. I'd really like to visit Minneapolis someday, from what I saw it looked like a really nice city. It was covered in a surprising number of trees (for a city), and looked very beautiful and quaint from above. After about 45 minutes in the airport we boarded our plane, which was absolutely huge (2 floors, held over 400 passengers!) I was a little disappointed with the plane -- I had heard that NWA is one of the nicest airlines, but this particular plane lacked a lot. No screens in the seat in front of you, so if you could even see the screen at the front of the cabin (which I couldn't), you were forced to watch their horrible movie selections, which included "Wild Hogs" and some movie starring Ice Cube and the guy from Scrubs. I luckily had saved my 40th anniversary Rolling Stone specifically for this journey, and I spent most of my time on the plane reading it fervently. In fact, I read the entire thing from cover to cover. I've now decided that I want to read the biographies/accounts of my favorite bands of that era (the beatles, pink floyd, the doors, grateful dead). I'm not sure though if I should start with bands I already know something about, like the Beatles, or if I should start somewhere new, like the Grateful Dead. I haven't heard a lot of Dead music, so it would be kind of cool to experience it for the first time while getting the back story as well. I'll have to think about this....
After 13.5 hours and three horrible meals, we finally arrived in Tokyo/Narita. Luckily, my luggage made it (Richard and a few others were not so lucky). We quickly boarded a bus and were off to the hotel, which took about an hour and fifteen minutes to reach. At the hotel we received our room keys and a ridiculously large packet of information (little did I know how many books and pamphlets JET would unload on me before the orientation was through). I lugged my crap up to my room on the 34th floor (the hotel has 45 floors), and was pleasantly met by the nicest hotel room I think I've ever stayed in. Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
The view from our room:
Annnnnd more view:
Within 3 minutes of arriving in my room, I jumped in the shower for a much-needed wash down (this was around 7:30AM eastern time, so I'd been in transit for about 24 hours). A few of us then went out into Shinjuku, the district in which the hotel is situated, and ate sushi for dinner and did a bit of window shopping. Around midnight I finally drifted into some of the deepest sleep I've had in a while - multiple Japanese anxiety dreams ensued.
More on the rest of orientation tomorrow - I'm about to keel over. Stay tuned!
1 comment:
A small correction, it was Saturday morning when you left, not Friday.
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