Dawn of the First Day

This post is likely to be a huge mess because it was written partially during the journey and partially afterwords. Also I don't know how to write words anymore. How do I do this?

Initially I was tempted to try to write these in English and Japanese but that seems very time consuming as I don't know the vocabulary necessary to convey my thoughts in an appropriate manner in Japanese. So here's English:


'Twas the morning of August 21st, at the wee hours of 2-A.M. I, or should I say my family, woke up to drive to Minneapolis so that I could take the first leg of my journey to Japan: Minneapolis, Minnesota to Toronto, Canada. That whole drive -> flight ordeal went very smoothly thanks to my loving parents and younger sister (<3), and my super pal, Micah for joining me in the adventure known as "studying abroad."

Somewhere between meeting up in Minneapolis before our flight and landing in Toronto it came to my realization that Micah had his 3rd boarding pass from checking in online, and I did not. Because our 3rd flight was regional within Japan, and not directly run through Air Canada, with whom we booked our tickets, I figured I had to get my pass in Japan. Guess not. We decided to work on that *before* getting to Tokyo so we wouldn't have to suffer language barriers. I got my boarding ticket and found out we'd fly on a 747 from Tokyo to Osaka, neat!

While we waited the eternity of what- 5 hours- in Toronto, we got food/drinks at Starbucks (because Canadian food is scary), and played on these iPads set up in the terminal with these slots, blackjack, and scratch card games. There were credit card machines next to the iPad's presumably to charge your coins for these gambling games, but all you had to do was watch an ad for 10 seconds to get more points. The games boasted real rewards. During our time waiting for our flight from Toronto to Tokyo we redeemed a combined nearly $20 worth of goods, including a Mountain Dew, a Dr Pepper, a turkey sandwich (the most expensive item redeemable), a cliff bar, and a Fuji water, not to mention the left over points and coins we had. Hey, free stuff is cool.

Once we boarded the plane to Tokyo, geared up with the typical neat-o techno-gizmos that big international planes have, we found that not only was the 30 minute delay we had already waited not it, but we would wait a total of more than 3 hours after our projected take off time to do so. The latter 2.5 hours were spent on the plane playing games, watching movies (Batman vs Superman and Hunger Games: Mockingjay pt2.), and listening to music on their touch tvs. The flight attendants also handed out pillows, blankets, earbuds, and water to passengers. The scheduled takeoff time was 1:35pm (EST) and arrival time 3:35pm (JST) the following day. Leaving at 4:50 changed that a bit.

Before we even took off we found ourselves tired and hungry. Yet there were 13 hours of flying to go Micah and I were also really worried our 3 hours of delay might make us miss our connection in Tokyo to Osaka, especially because we thought we had to go through customs, get our bags, and re-go through security.

About two hours into the flight we got served our main dinner meal. Salad with green beans, tomato, and cabbage. With the main dish of either honey pepper chicken served with pasta and vegetables or yakiniku beef, with brownie for dessert. The mid-flight snack was a chicken sandwich, cookies, and cup noodles. Pre-arrival breakfast was orange or apple juice, honeydew and cantaloupe as a fruit side, and bread and butter. As well as a choice of Japanese rice congee (what we got) and florentine omelette with beef. Lots of tv, music, movies, games, and sleeping later we finally landed in Tokyo, 3 hours late.

We made our way to baggage claim for regional flights, went through and got our resident cards, grabbed our bags, and met with an Air Canada representative who said we could change our 5:00pm flight to ITM to a 10:45pm flight to KIX. Not where we wanted to go, but they said they couldn't otherwise accommodate us, so we might as well be out of a place to sleep in the correct city than the wrong city. We found the ticketing center she directed us to and stood in line for around 45 minutes before being redirected to a different line. We made friends with 3 other students too! Yay we're all stuck!

Now at this point we got two things done since our flight, we got our bags, and got our next flight changed, despite language barriers. We knew we might need two other things, one being money, and the other possibly being food. We got neither in Tokyo.

The minute we got through security to check an info kiosk for ATMs was the minute the ATMs closed. There's also no food places open at 9:00pm in probably the whole airport, and we didn't have money for them anyway. (Or the fancy and shiny vending machines for that matter.)

So we're hot, tired, gonna be getting on a plane really late to arrive even later to go to we don't know where, what else could go wrong?

I wrote that hoping to refute it with good news but alas, our replacement flight was also delayed. So Micah tried to sleep and I messaged our dearest Japanese friends asking for advice on where to spend the night.

We got on our plane 30 minutes after scheduled, which by the way, apparently entitled every passenger to a 5,000¥ ($50) compensation. I passed out for the entire flight in and out, we got off, met up with a few more international students, making our count 7, got our bags and went to the hotel connected to the airport. They only had smoking rooms and they were very expensive and at this point it's 12am- only 8 hours until dorms open again and honestly it's not worth it to me, Micah, or our new friend Megan to spend the money. So we lounge outside of a 24/7 Burger King and a shower room and debate what to do with our lives.

We all opened Pokemon go and I caught like 5 new Pokemon too, which was the highlight of my day right behind entering Japan. We went shopping at the convenience store, where I asked if they took cards. I grabbed a fried chicken sandwich and a familiar drink of calpis. Fell asleepish around 12:45am.


Woke up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy. At like 7 we three got up and went to the convenience store again and I got some kind of burger that was really yummy and a coffee to drink. Megan saw someone she recognized and we connected with them, and we all decided at this point it wasn't worth the trouble of getting a shower from the showering rooms.

We went to the bank for money finally at about 9 we went to see if we could get picked up. (Almost all of us emailed staff but staff never responded.) We got told to meet back around 10 so we sat around and talked with all our cool friends. Nick, Nick, Sam, Sam, Megan, and more whose names will likely appear later.

We went to board the bus and headed to Kansai Gaidai, drove for maybe an hour, got to our respective seminar houses to check in, and were on our own. Micah and I split up here because we are in different seminar houses. Personally I didn't go back to the seminar house lobby for a trip to get food because I was still tired and really wanted to shower. So I did just that, I showered and napped and was up again at 3. I also talked briefly with my roommate, Stefanie, who had gotten to the room yesterday.

When I woke up I checked out the tv in the common area of our dorm. Not a lot going on, 3 dramas, one of them Korean, a show about how to prevent hacking, a couple sales shows and a game show.

Just short of 4, another roommate, Christina joined us. Both she and Stefanie are German so they caught up real quick in Deustch.

Then we joined a shopping tour given by Christina's guides and bought some food and drinks for the next couple days. When we got back it was 5pm, which is conveniently right now. I'm gonna post this. Right. Now. Because these two days have been long and orientation is tomorrow. Good night people, or good morning. More on orientation is to come.

-Dusk of the Second Day