I am home! YEA!! I'm still tired so I'm just doing nothing today. I'll probably pay for that tomorrow when I go to my office and am so far behind. Oh well. I really need to just chill out. I started typing an e-mail to one of my groups about my trip, but I'm not sure I want to share it. But I don't want to delete it so I thought I'd post it here. It's kind of a travel log of my last few hours in Japan and my trip home:There's so much to tell I'm not sure where to start. I'll go backwards with my trip home since it's the freshest in my mind. I left my sisters house at 9am on Monday morning and my plane landed here in California at 9am Monday morning! LOL!! My sister lives about 3 hours by train from Narita airport so it was a long journey there. Once I got to my gate I was eyeing all of the other passengers wondering who I would be stuck sitting next to for 9 hours. On the way to Japan, I sat next to a Korean girl who was very quiet and didn't want to talk or interact at all.
So I was praying and hoping I'd get somebody friendly as a seat mate for the way home. I had the window seat so it's easier for me to bother the person if I need to get up if I can develop some kind of rapport with them. Well, I ended up sitting next to a 22 year old 6'5" marine! LOL!! He was hysterical and the perfect seat mate. He was stationed in Iwakuni and was going home for the first time in 2 years. He was so excited and was talking on and on about going home - like a little kid. He was airport fire rescue in Iwakuni so he was explaining all the signs to me on the runway.
He was a prankster too. The girl in front of us had her arm rest up and her tv remote was still in it. So he acted like he was going to push the buttons. I dared him to do it, so he did. We were ROFLOL!. Poor thing couldn't figure out why her t.v. was going haywire. She was using the touchscreen menu and he was pushing the remote buttons. He kept turning it off and on and playing with the channels. LOL!! About 1/2 hour later I was turning channels on mine and it started acting squirrelly. I was thinking what the heck, when I realized he was playing with my remote. LOL!!
He made the trip home go by quickly. We managed to sleep some. It's not easy to sleep in an airplane seat in the first place, and when the guy next to you is 6'5", he takes up a lot of space and encroaches on yours! LOL!!
I only managed to sleep at all because Sandra and I stayed out until 4am the night before I left! LOL! Her friend wanted us to go to karaoke with him so we did. Karaoke in Japan is not like in the U.S. You go to the karaoke bar and then you are given your own private room with just you and your friends. There are no strangers involved. Everyone inputs their own songs into the machine and everybody kind of sings together, plus sings alone. To order food and drinks you pick up the phone on the wall and call and order and then they bring it to you. Whenever you want more drinks or something else to eat. You just pick up the phone. There ended up being 7 of us there. It was really a lot of fun.
One of the things you don't do in Japan is leave a group - it's very rude. Whenever you go out everything is done by group consensus. An individuual does not stand up against the group and say "no, I'm going home" or "no, I want to do this" or whatever. So we couldn't just leave until they were done with karaoke. Well, we left karaoke at 11 but then they wanted to go for "one drink." Sandra and I were planning to go home by 10 or 11 so I could pack, etc. Well, once everyone had decided to go out for one drink, we couldn't say no, we were leaving. Well, we did try and say that, but I knew there was no way we were getting off that easy. Sandra's friend is Japanese and he is learning English. So she taught him "one drink, my ass." LOL! So that's what I told him. LOL! When you are the only sober person amongst several people who are slightly tipsy, you get overruled pretty quickly, even if it would have been culturally acceptable to leave! LOL!!
So we went for "one drink" at a bar that closed at midnight - so I thought, oh cool. That won't be too late. Last train is at 12:30, the bar will close and everyone will go home. Except for that Sandra's friend's friend missed his last train. His last train was at 11:45 apparently. After, I heard that I knew we weren't making last train either. It would be even ruder for the group to go home when one person has missed the last train and can't get home. He could have taken a cab but he lived a lot farther than we did and it would have cost him an arm and a leg.
So they left that place at midnight and I tried really hard to even get Sandra to give me the key so I could go back on the last train and she could just come home later. But at this point they were almost all too far gone to care what I wanted! LOL! So on I trudged. The best part about the city where my sister lives (Fujisawa) is that there are a ton of foreigners. So there are people from all over the world living there. One of the guys who was out with us that night was from Melbourne and he lives there now. When we went to the next place we met two guys from Holland who were there on business. They were so excited to see us and to hear English. So they started chatting to us too. Finally Sandra's friend told her he was really drunk and wanted to go home, so we managed to convince everybody that it was time to leave. We ended up taking a cab home - we made the guy drive through McD's because we were hungry. We got home around 4, ate, and stayed up talking until almost 5. Then I got up at 8 to get packed and ready to leave for the airport around 9.
It was then a 20 minute walk to the station, then a 3 1/2 hour ride to the airport (along with 3 train transfers) until I arrived at the American Airlines ticket counter and made my way to the airport gate.
So that's the last night/day. I'm not sure how much I want to share with the list. I think I'll write out every day over the next few days and post it on here. That way I can go back in a few days and just copy and paste what I want to share with them and what I don't.
