The Long Flight to Tokyo

Before I start this post, I want to apologize for the lack of pictures. When walking through Tokyo for the first time I was so jet lagged that I didn’t think to grab my camera. I was in definite zombie status.

The trip has just began! Our flight went well. It was a long one, 12 or 13 hours. The cool thing about it was each seat had its own little touchscreen tv that had some movies programmed onto it. I watched “Les Miserables” and “Wreck it Ralph”. The flight actually went by pretty quickly. For dinner on the plane we got little Bento boxes of food. They had a big cube that I thought was cheese but when I bit into it I found out it wasn’t. I was confused as to what the weird substance was. The lady next to me told me that it was actually an egg all cooked up and put into the shape of a cube. Then the egg was sugared and sweetened.

After getting off of the plane I was amazed by all the little things. They drive on the other side of the road here. The vans and trucks are teeny tiny. It’s as if someone made them and then tried to squish them smaller. There are rice paddies everywhere and they are gorgeous. Tokyo is WAY bigger than I thought!

Then we got to the hotel. It is super nice, and we are on the 14^th floor. We were given some time to rest and then went out for dinner. Our program advisor took us to a really nice restaurant on the 29^th floor of a building. We had crab croquetas, fried shrimp, miso soup, and all sorts of other stuff.

After dinner we walked around Tokyo. At early evening the streets are packed with people. All the alleys between buildings are full of shops. There are people outside of restaurants and shops with microphones promoting. Everything is lit up.

Although I was in jet-lag zombie mode, it has been a good introduction to the trip. It really gets me excited for what’s to come. Tomorrow we were told that we are visiting a government building and need to dress up.