Day 1: はじめましよう (Let's begin...)

Well, I've arrived safe and sound at a swanky hotel in Tokyo, the Grand Pacific Le Daiba. I'm excited to be here!

The Tokyo cityscape from my hotel room

It's funny how things manage to go awry immediately… After hustling to the airport for my 9AM flight from St. Louis to Los Angeles, we sat on the plane for two hours because the engines wouldn't start properly. Of course, by the time I arrived in LA, I had missed my flight to Tokyo. And so it goes.

Thanks, Ahmed!

When we landed in LA, I received a message that American Airlines had rescheduled me for the flight to Tokyo the next day, and I was about to be like heck no (since I would have to miss the beginning of my program), but then when I got off the plane, to my surprise, a man in a purple uniform was holding a sign with my name. The nice man, Ahmed, helped me re-check in to a new flight with Singapore airlines.

The flight attendants' uniforms.

The flight itself was fine, about 11.5 hours long, but it went by quickly, between napping, studying Japanese, and watching Twelve Years a Slave (which I could write a whole post about, but I'll spare you.) The flight attendants had cool uniforms, which you can kind of see in the blurry picture to the right. I also took the opportunity to have my first Japanese meal… but it was airplane food so I'm hoping it will only get better.

By the time I landed in Tokyo, I had missed the group travel plan that I signed up for with my program, which meant I had to navigate myself to the hotel for the night. Good chance to whip out the Japanese, huh! And Well, I tried, starting by calling the woman from my program, then buying a bus ticket to a neighboring airport so I could take a taxi to the hotel we're at for the night. I definitely used すみません ("sorry!") about every third word, but what can you do. If it's any indication, I'll definitely have plenty of opportunities to make a fool of myself in the future.

The Limousine Bus to the other airport was pretty nice, actually (don't let the name fool you though… it's still a bus). It is highly impolite to talk on the phone when using public transportation, so it was nice and quiet, and I just watched out the window as we rode through Tokyo. It was funny to see a mall with huge signs for Krispy Kreme and Auntie Anne's… won't be checking those out, I think.

So, here I am. Sharing a room with two other students from my program tonight, then we leave at 8AM to catch our flight to Hakodate as a group. Then, right after we check in to a hotel there, we start our placement tests. Whoopee... I'll be studying some tomorrow morning – I've been trying to review for the past couple of weeks, but I have yet to go through everything I theoretically should now.

Well, I know the travel talk is mundane, but maybe I'll have something more interesting to tell you soon. At any rate, I'm excited just to have made it on time (praise God), and to be here. Thanks to the Light Fellowship and the Yale Japanese faculty in particular for your hard work to help me have this opportunity. We'll see what it brings!

The airport welcomes me