1st Full Day

I got into Narita yesterday at about 6:30, and, much to my surprise, disembarkation went through very smoothly. Actually getting on the plane was quite another story: I had an original itinerary from Pittsburgh to Chicago to Narita, and while those airports didn't change, the times sure did. I started out (of course) around 7:30 at Pittsburgh Int'l Airport, where my flight was supposed to leave at 9:30. It left at 11:30. My flight from chicago left at 11:20; never mind the time difference, I wouldn't have made it, so I necessarily changed my flight from Chicago to Narita, which was, at first, not available. Finally, United throws me on an American flight, one that leaves me with about 25 minutes to get from the Pittsburgh flight arriving at O'Hare terminal 3 to the Narita flight that is in terminal one. I made it, sweating, a bit short of breath, and probably only because of what was announced two hours later while we were still grounded waiting to depart: the plane was broken. That flight was intended to depart at 12:50... we left around 4:30.

So, all in all, America left me with what I expected, a sour taste in my mouth.

But Japan, this land of superior efficiency (that's probably a bit of hyperbole) raised my spirits upon arrival. Getting from the plane, through immigration, to my luggage, and then to the meeting point for us Interacs took all of maybe 45 minutes. The only hitch was there was another employee arriving at about 9 PM, which meant that the rep from Interac had to stay to meet them. This didn't really prove to be much of a problem, though, because the combined knowledge of Tokyo between another employee also there and I meant that we just left the guy there and made our way to the Asakusa Central Hotel, where I am sitting typing this right now. Oh, but I did have to leave my 2 largest bags for a company to haul over here today, because there was no way in hell I would be dragging what amounted to at least 150 lbs around for the apprx. 1.5 hours it took to get from Narita to the hotel.

When we arrived, (a bit short on cash I must say, out of the 19K Yen I brought in cash, I've spent 10K on travel (well, 2K of that on dinner)), I got into my disorientatingly small room, unpacked what I had on me, took a shower, and went out to dinner with the woman I came to the hotel with around 11 PM. I went to bed at 1-ish, woke up at 5 (jetlag isn't too bad, or at least it isn't yet; I'm rather excited to get this process under way), read a bit, got some green tea and onigiri (rice balls, in this case with pickled plums in the middle) for breakfast, picked up an undershirt but no belt (i forgot to grab those things out of the suitcases I offed on the delivery company), and started up this blog. Its been a lot of work, I guess, thus far, but hey I just moved here and have only a nominal idea of what's gong to happen over the next 4 days.

I'll probably head out with "the group" after day 1 of orientation today, and hopefully I'll get over my fear of being "that guy with the camera" and take some real touristy type pictures of, at least, Kaminarimon Shrine near here. You think you've seen big, red asian lanterns before? Psh, you have no idea.