1. Across the Narrow Sea (aka leg room and sandwiches)

THE BORING PART

Welcome to my first post!  I've never done a blog before, blah blah desperate plea for attention blah.  So I'm staying in Japan for a year to teach English, and this will be my chronicles of my attempt to survive in the boonies with extremely limited Japanese skills.  Writing has never been my strong suit, so please forgive my terse sentences and general blundering attempts to comunikate thrugh wurds.  The only thing I am worse at than writing is photography, and you might find yourself looking at some of that too.  I'll try to use some photos I find on Google images so you don't have to deal with terrible lighting and framing.

THE LESS BORING PART

I get to the airport 45 minutes after when they told us to be there, and I'm wearing flip flops, which they specifically told us not to wear (a luggage cart could slice your foot off!).  I am berated for both.  Whatever.  I came in to the airport with a gallon jug half-full (optimism!) of water, and I am forced to drink it all in the line for security. I barely make it through the metal detector before I run to the men's room.

Once we get on the plane, everything is super high tech.  Instead of shutters on the windows, they have buttons that slowly tint the windows to a darker shade of blue.  The toilet has three different bidet functions, and the lights in the bathroom gradually turn on as you open the door so as not to alarm you (I suppose).  I managed to snag an exit row somehow, so I have a hot date with seven feet of leg room for nine hours.

All the attendants bow incessantly, which is super weird and I am uncomfortably reminded of how much bowing I will have to do in the near future.  One of them comes around to talk with me about my special dietary needs, which confuses me at first.  Eventually, I remember my friend Pepper recommended I select Hindu dietary restrictions on the plane so that I would get served delicious curry, a plan which works swimmingly.

I was super worried about not getting enough food on the plane and bus to the hotel, so I packed six sandwiches, two quesadillas, a bag of green beans and carrots, and a tupperware full of rice, lentils, and kale.  Turns out the quesadillas are the last bit of cheese I will be eating for a while.

Interestingly enough, there is a leak in the roof, and a bunch of water pours out right onto my legs right as we touch down.  I think this is hilarious, but the flight attendant sitting across from me looks horrified and gets on her phone and has a hushed conversation in Japanese.  As I left the plane, they take me aside and have a very serious conversation about how they want to dry clean my jeans for me.  I tell them it's fine.

On the bus ride over to the hotel, I realize how illiterate I am.  It seems as if 90% of the writing uses kanji, by far the most difficult of the three Japanese alphabets, and the one I haven't studied at all.  Not being able to read simple signs makes me feel very small and powerless.

Alright whiner, this isn't a diary.

Anyway, we all get to the hotel in Tokyo with no major incidences, and the hotel is super nice, but we are packed three to a room in fairly small rooms.  I manage to find someone to lend me a pair of shoes for the swanky orientation period (I of course forgot my dress shoes in the US), then we go out for a night on the town! Details to follow.

THE GOOD PART