Day One

I woke up this morning at 6 o'clock, got my stuff together and carried my bags downstairs and waited for the shuttle to come. It arrived at 6:25, after I sat impatiently on the curb for a good 15 minutes, and took the shuttle to Marta. The train arrived promptly and delivered me to the airport quickly as well, and although Marta is very limited in its destinations, I feel like its the best way to get to the airport, that is if you live close enough to it, not to have to drive to the station. Both security and check-in went smoothly, and at check-in, the agent kindly asked me if I wished to change my seat, from the middle of a 5-person row to the aisle seat on a 2 person row, how sweet the glory. Having plenty of time to kill, I walked all the way from check-in to concourse E to get currency exchanged; I got 190000 yen and 520 RMB. My gate was in concourse T, so I decided that I had walked enough and took the train back. Once I found my gate, I bought a coffee and waited for what seemed only a short while. I'm now currently on the airplane waiting to take off for Dulles. // After sitting silently for 30 minutes next to a clearly Chinese woman, I started talking (with my limited, very so, skills in Mandarin) to her. She is a very nice woman from Beijing whose son lives in Atlanta. Whenever I knew how to say what I needed to say in Mandarin, she never had a problem understanding me, and that is encouraging.// Now we're landing in Dulles, it is rather cloudly & the airport looks (much like Erin said once) dull. My lay-over is an hour & a half, than it's off to Tokyo. I quickly shoved down some Wendy's & called Lacey (after attempting a total of 10 pay phones).// i've got about one hour left overall left in the flight. i know it's 14 hours, but there was plenty to do. I took advantage of the free drinks having: a bloody mary, some bailey's, some Jim Beam, and 2 Kirin. I loves me the booze. I'm done with 7 of the 8 Japanese lessons, & I've read a good bit of one of the guide books. I slept about 4 hours, watched The Pursuit of Happyness and Rocky Balboa, both good movies. The tv just told me that it's a beautiful sunny day in Tokyo at 77 degrees Fareignheit (or 25 degrees Celcius if you're Nihon-jin). I've written quite a bit in this enrty , which makes me wonder if i'll need a bigger journal. I'm excited to land, Ruoya should be waiting for me at my gate or when I pass through customs and immigration...We'll see.//I got off the plane & went through immigration, and when they asked me who I was here to see, I didn't know (Ruoya never told me) So I answered with Ruoya Wang (true). Ruoya's plane got delayed leaving Chicago, so he arrived late so I ended up waiting for him for about an hour. His aunt was waiting for him near me most of the time, but I had no idea who she was, so I never talked to her. We then rode the train into Tokyo and then transferred a couple of times and after approximately an hour, we arrived in Nerima and took a taxi to his Uncle and Aunt's apartment. There we met his uncle and his cousin, Kan. We sat our things inside and immediately went to dinner nearby. We ate a ton of food, including an absurd amount of sushi, everything was good excpet for sea urchin roe (tastes like innards). We then returned to the apartment and promptly fell asleep after our long days.