Flying to the land of the rising sun

I can't hardly believe it....I'm in Japan!

(The following is a glorified version of my emails with pictures and more descriptions. If you aren't receiving my emails from Japan and would like to then please leave a comment with your address and I'll add you to my ever growing list)

My cousin Erin took this picture on her phone. We're on a bus from Osaka, Japan to her apartment in Nishinomiya, Japan! This is after my long loooooong flight and after worshipping being on the ground!

(left to right) Felix, Steven and Erin

My flights were great. There is nothing like flying. Everytime I go I get one of those warm fuzzy feelings the first time we take off. Here's a picture of my United Airlines plane that I took from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles at 6am in the morning.

I landed in Los Angeles at 6:48am due to a time change. Nearly an hour flight. Then I had a seven hour layover until my flight to Japan. Seven hours is a long time. I thought about going to the beach but the Los Angeles airport was such a zoo and I worried that I wouldn't be able to find my way back if I took a bus to the beach. I decided instead to take a free shuttle ride to the hotel Marriott and to just rest in their nice air conditioned lobby.

Once I arrived at the Marriott I walked around the building and somehow found a way to their swimming pool and outdoor commons area. This was perfect! They had lounge chairs that folded down flat and I just slept their most of the day in preparation for my 15 hour time change difference in Japan.

I took the free shuttle back to the zoo I mean airport with three hours to get my boarding pass and go past security. Luckily I needed every second because when I arrived I saw this.

Now multiply this by a quadrupleton and that's how many people were in front of me. This picture is towards the end once I could actually see the electronic signs for Japan Airlines that reassured me I hadn't stood in that line in haste for some other company.
Standing in line to receive my boarding pass took nearly two hours.

Then going through security took another 45 minutes. Finally I arrived at my gate to see the giant Japanese Airline plane that I would be sitting on for over 12 hours. Oh yeah double decker baby!

The flight was interesting. On the back of the seats was an LCD screen that you could play games on and view cameras from outside the plane and also see your flight progress including outside air temperature.

I had a window seat. There were three seats on the edges and 5 in the middle of the plane.

We flew up the coast of the western US

around the Aleutian Islands of Alaska,

then over the ocean, and down the coast of Japan until we landed in Osaka, Japan.

They fed me very well on the plane. Three main course meals and the bread was amazing! It was sweet and different from US bread because the texture was more chewy. All the bread in Japan is more chewy and wow I love it sooo much.



I sat next to an older Korean guy that was very talkative. However, I couldn't understand a thing that he said but somehow we both managed by gesturing a lot. I taught him how to play solitaire on the little LCD screen on the back of the airline seats. They had a remote control that also functioned as a game controller. Somehow by pointing and by playing a game on my screen he figured out that red goes on black and visa versa and that king, queen, etc comes next. The game made this more easier to learn because obviously it wouldn't allow you to put a card where it didn't belong. Then he showed me how to eat and what to do with all the sauces and things that you pour on the noodles and salads.

I slept periodically on the flight but I wanted to make sure that I didn't sleep through passing over the International Date Line. Once I passed over it I did a little cheer and took a picture.

I was the only person to give a little wOOt and I think everyone else must either travel over it a lot or were sleeping so they didn't care. I however thought it was fun to pass into the future like that. In so doing though, I effectively lost a day of my life. In some sense I lost two days of my life because flying all day from 6am to 2pm on Friday and then after crossing the line it became Saturday at about 2pm. So about 12 hours of my life are gone. I'll never experience those until I regain those hours coming back the opposite way.

My first view of Japan.

I landed in Japan at about 6pm and then Erin and Felix met me there after I went through customs and foreign passport inspection. The flight was long. 12 hours with little leg room.

Then we took a long bus ride to Nishinomiya station. I dropped off all my luggage at her lovely apartment and then we went to a little Japanese restaurant around the corner. I had some ginger-pork and a little croquette which is actually French. Also miso soup and a salad. Then I fell asleep. I don't have jet lag too bad because I slept during my 7 hour layover in Los Angeles.

The sun sets in the land of the rising sun.