Day one of trip

6/18/08:
Thursday the 12th in the U.S., Michael and I hustle to make it to the PHX airport on time, which we do through the 40 mph driving and intense worrying of Shirley. However, through Delta-the plane was an 1 & 20 minutes late! Causing us to miss our flight from LAX to NRT! So then we had to go through all the b.s. of re-collecting our baggages (mind you, took 3 hours) then bitching out Delta and forcing them to get us a hotel and a new flight out, which naturally they were reluctant to do. They tried saying that it would be a few days before we could leave and we weren't going to allow that!-but we got a flight out for the next day. Spent $50 in hotel phone calls to Shirley letting her know we were okay, a six-pack that we barely touched and a $10 movie which we never ended up even watching (Dewey Cox...). Michael was also pissed at me because I was not willing to spend $50 for a one way taxi ride to some fancy schmancy strip in LA (Sunset Blvd I think he said?) and then pay that amount to get home too-$100 joy ride is just ridiculous to me. Why spend that money and we weren't even in Japan yet!?! You feel me right? Anyway-we make it to the airport the next day spending already ~$100 in hotel and food expenses and the plane was on time to take us to Portland! We make it to Portland and...they had a Rogue Brewery Restaurant! We had lunch there, walked around aimlessly and the plane finally arrived to take us to Tokyo! The airflight was insane. We actually got the best economy seats ever! Front row with LOTS of space in comparison to the other seats on the plane. It was long-the first 6 hours were fine-but knowing that there will be 5 more hours was excruciating-especially since your body starts to tense up and my god damn remote for the TV wasn't working correctly. And not to mention-like all movie stereotypes of a plane ride-there was a freakin' baby in the next aisle that would temperamentally cry like all hell broke loose, which sprayed fiery needles into my bleak soul. Ironic that I detest babies crying when I intern at a PEDs hospital..hmph.

We drank wine for free, fortunately-in due to the mistake of the stewardess. Plane food isn't bad per se-it just isn't very scrumptious either.

*Random note-people in Japan bow for everything! The train inspector walks through the aisles randomly and when they make it to the end of the car they always bow! How adorable (oh, I'm writing this on a train ride in Japan)*

Back to the plane chit chat-so yes-the plane ride was long-ridiculously long-OH! One more thing that causes me to believe Japs are robots. The moment the plane was in motion-all of their heads rested in a uniform position of "turned off" and they all instinctively went to sleep...it was nuts..It was something one would see in Village of the Damned of something...

So wait-all of this and we still aren't in Japan! But of course we eventually make it. When we land it was NUTS! The airport was eerily silent, but there's a lot of people moving around. All the signs were naturally in their crazy symbols aka Kanji-I'll call it jibber jabber-and it was actually sort of confusing at first because no one spoke English-and you must remember it's our first few moments of grasping the layout of Japan from an airport so it was kind of blinding at first. However, after filling out the right forms to allow us to enter the country, getting our finger prints forever engrained in the system and an awful picture taken (I mean seriously...what the fuck, who asks someone to take an ID picture after being on an airplane for that long?!?!) we emerge from the airport into the densely packed station of Japan. This is where we had to figure out changing out JR certificate into an official JR pass, buy postcards/stamps and soak up the pure awesomeness of actually BEING in Japan; which to this very moment I still am shocked about.

Drunken with sleep deprivation, yet irreversibly electric with giddy awe-Michael and I manage to find the right route which will lead us to our hotel in the Shinjuku district. We make it and the madness begins! We emerge from the station to see the fiery hustle and bustle of the city, afterall it *was* a Saturday night in Tokyo and the night of the city was alive! Relatively shocked of the ants crowding the streets in the recognizable moments and familiarity- we try to search through them for our hotel. We were lost and we know how to ask nothing yet in Japanese-so no one was of help. Then a "sweet" man approached Michael, welcoming him to Japan and then within moments tried asking for money. Hmph. Clever beggar.