back in Japan

After getting out of Narita Airport Customs and onto Japanese ground, it took:

3 minutes to find my guide Kubo Kayako and get to her car
4 minutes to receive my first schedule
4.5 minutes to fail at speaking Japanese to the driver who was driving me to Saitama-shi
6 minutes to see rice paddies
8 minutes to see a love hotel
10 minutes to spot somebody riding a bike

Some things about Japan just never change.

I made it to a very nice room in the Royal Pines Hotel in Saitama-shi and am going to set out soon to find a Softbank store. (Also maybe try to weasel free internet from Testsuya Fukuda, the manager at the Business Establishment Division’s Industry and Labor Department. I met him at the hotel and he helped get me checked in). We’re supposed to go out for a nice dinner and sake tonight, which sounds fun and maybe even relaxing.

I hardly slept at all on the plane—a few hours at most. I watched a few movies and American TV shows in Japanese with no English subs, played Disgaea until my PSP battery died and talked to a nice guy next to me.

I fell asleep on the car ride to the hotel, too, even though I was trying really hard to stay awake as we drove on the highway that seems to skirt around Tokyo. From the car it was difficult to recognize any landmarks, except for the glaringly obvious Tokyo Disney.

Well, it’s 4:41 p.m. local time. I gotta get going if I want to get stuff done and rest a bit before 8pm dinner. And I need to find a vending machine for a drink—the flight attendants plain forgot our row during the last round of drinks before we landed.

It’s so exciting to be back!!!

またね。