My Japan trip and more.posted May 11th 2008, 9:33PM
Mood: Carefree
Its been awhile, so I guess I should go over how my trip to Japan was, then go on to other things.
First off I have to say, flying for that long is torture. I had to go from here to Detroit, then to Japan. The plane was a little late so that got us worried because we had someone picking us up at Narita at a certain time. The flight to Detroit was in a small plane that only took about an hour. Once we got there we had to run to our next terminal. The plane was enormous. I had the luxury of having a window seat, which was nice. Unless you have to go to the bathroom..but I wasn't feeling good throughout the whole flight so I never went to the bathroom once. Honestly, never do that. First of all its bad for your bladder, and second of all you arn't suppose to sit in the same spot for that extended amount of time! Which was a twelve and a half hour flight by the way. My butt was literally numb for a week, it kind of scared me. The movies all sucked.
I had to sit through five movies back to back and none of them I would ever go see willingly. I watched Music & Lyrics probebly three times, going and coming from Japan. Torture. And what made it worse was that I can't sleep on a plane! So I was sitting there vegitating the whole time. O_O
The food wasn't too bad, kind of good actually. We all got a card with the meal choices throughout the flight. One side was in english while the other was in Japanese. I had some rice and chicken thing. Plus it came with a chocolate brownie that was amazing. I let myself splurg. :p A few hours later they gave us some sandwhich snacks, then another meal a few hours before landing.
Blah, blah. When we landed and we [finally] got off the plane it was my first experience of feeling so isolated. Lol. I couldn't understand what anyone was saying, read and signs, and I looked completely diffrent from everyone else. It was awesome though, I had been waiting for this moment for so long. Sat in from of a huge screen tv and waited for our ride. We were going to be staying in Kita Koshigaya, a small suburb a little ways outside of Tokyo, in the guesthouse: the Hanata Inn(Saitama area I believe). A two hour drive from Narita airport. This was fantastic on my butt...
When we finally got there it was getting dark. We signed in and Tin Tin, the manager(a strange, odd smelling women)gave us the keys to our rooms. Everyone had a roommate but me. It was $1000 a room for two weeks, so two people to a room, $500 a person. Tin Tin was gracious enough to knock it down for me since I didn't have a roommate, so I payed $500 for a room to myself. So that was cool.
The room was really small, with an even smaller bathroom. My window looked out over the small street and houses, plus a huge Elementry school behind those where you would hear kids all the time. The humidity was horrible, and my air conditioner in my room didn't actually work right. The pillow was paper thin and the blanket was too thick!
We all set our stuff down and took a walk to Kita Koshigaya station. There were only five of us, and three out of the five have been there before. Me and another kid being the newbies. They decided to get dinner at Mcdonalds, of all places. Mainly because it was late. I never go there at home, so that would have been my last choice. I had no idea what to order, lol. That was an experience. One of the guys with me pointed to something and thats what I was getting..ha. I didn't. We got back to the Hanata. I took one bite of my fries and burger and threw the rest out. I felt sick with the taste of it. It wasn't any diffrent than the Mcdonalds here, I'm just not used to it. I grabbed a granola bar I had brought and went to bed.
The next morning I woke up and it was just getting daylight...at almost 4am! o_O Land of the rising sun.
I think I'll make this shorter.
I walked around Kita Koshigaya a lot, and went over to Koshigaya station and had lunch at a yummy revolving sushi restraunt. Plus on the way back I had a strange encounter with a Japanese boy. I got seperated from the others in my group(we were all on bikes), because of a crosswalk, but I knew my way back. So I'm sitting there on the bike an a guy is walking past me, exactly my height & I'm only 5"3'. He stops, and starts trying to talk to me in Japanese. Like it wasn't obvious enough that I couldn't speak it. Then he started following and trying to talk to me. He tryed talking in his broken english saying beautiful. I managed to understand some of what he was saying. He was 24, and he tryed to ask where I was from and how long I'd be there. I thought it was kind of fun trying to communicate with that language barriar, and found out his name was Satoshi. Yeah well then he kissed me, right on the lips. I was totally shocked, lol. Then he kept saying big, indicating my chest. Japan is a very safe country, and most of the people are usually pretty reserved and don't really try to communicate out of the blue. Yet there are others who aren't afraid at all, ha. So that was something I'll never forget.
I got to visit Tokyo a few times,& saw the Imperial Palace from a distance. I went half way up Tokyo Tower at night and looked over the city. The wait to get to the top was another 45 minutes.
Asakusa is huge tourist attraction area with a lot of shrines and tones of shops. I had lunch at some little place there, which was amazing. I bought a lot of souveniers here.
We were suppose to see a baseball game in Yokohama, but it was rained out so we walked around the bay. I was dissippointed that I wasn't able to see the ocean much during the day because when we got near the ocean it was already night. Although if you looked over the railing you could see millions and millions of white jellyfish swimming below. If you fell in you'd be gone.
I had the oppurtunity to go to Akihabara, Shibuya, and Harajuku all in one day with a women named Kiki, who spoke really good english. Akihabara is the big electronic district. I wished so much that my brother could have been there with me for that. I bought him a DK plush and some good, big, headphones. Shibuya was a little disappointing because there weren't many people cosplaying and whatnot. I had some delicious cold Udon in a little underground restraunt. Mmm, Japanese for is definetely better IN Japan.
Found a cool internet cafe near Kita Koshigaya station where I'd go and talk to my brother online and e-mail family and friends. You sign up and get this little green card, and you can ask for a variety of things. You can watch movies, go on the net,or play PS2, all in your own little enclosed cubicles. Plus you can anything you want to drink(non-alcoholic)on your own, and order food through a phone that every cubicle has. Of course that one would be difficult not knowing Japanese.
I did a lot of shopping around Kita Koshigaya. One of the guys and I found this little store that was like a threft store. Most things were at pretty resonable prices and I walked out loaded. I found an original GB for 550 Yen for my brother. I did a lot of shopping in Narita airport too. Its much more expensive there, but I had soo much money left over that it really didn't matter.
The flight from Japan to Detroit didn't seem as bad. I saw sunrise once when I woke up that morning then again on the way back to the states.
Theres so much more but its been a year now and I'm beggining to foget some smaller details. :/ I did meet a lot of interesting people. Three guys from the U.K., a guy from Romania, Sweden, Germany, & Czech. I would love to go back.
After I got back I tested for my black belt, in August, and got the belt a month later. I have a Muay Thai kickboxing fight coming up this august in Chicago where I'll be fighting in k1.
Going on another trip this month too. May 27 untill June 6th I'll be in Israel. I have fifteen days left. The three places I've been wanting to visit for awhile have been Japan, Israel, and Egypt.
The flight and tour are all payed for now. It all came up to $3,000, which was about the same as my Japan trip. I'll be bringing $500 in spending money, and I'll get my Dollars converted into Shekeles when I get there.
Other than that I don't really have time to draw as much as I used to, but when I can, and I'm motivated I'll manage to get a few out, or colored in photoshop. :p
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The movies all sucked. 
The three places I've been wanting to visit for awhile have been Japan, Israel, and Egypt.
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