Pre-Semester Abroad

While I am going abroad next semester, I am lucky enough to have started my travels abroad before I need to start taking classes. Since Sarah is living in Japan, I got to come here to Japan and visit her! I'll be going to the Universität Freiburg after this, but, I still have a bit to go before that.

Last Thursday, I got to JFK at 7:30 AM EST and checked into All Nippon Airways flight 9 to Narita International Airport, Tokyo. Sometime around 11:40, we pulled away from the gate, and I left the United States for the next 7 months, and the ground for the next 14 hours. 14 hours. It takes forever to get over Alaska. Being from the mainland, I don't really think about the place much, but we were over Alaska forever, it seemed. On the flight, I watched Public Enemies (in Japanese - I'm sure I missed a lot of the plot, but, I learned the word 'ginko' (銀行) which means 'bank,' from all the bank-robbing and -robbers. I also had the time to read Logicomix and to listen to a whole bunch of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe and didn't really manage to sleep at all.

Finally, we get to Tokyo, and my name gets announced over the PA. My first thought is "Oh no, nobody asked about my one-way ticket and they're not going to let me into the country" or something similarly irrational. Turns out, an nice All Nippon rep was waiting for me and told me they'd found a flight to Hiroshima leaving out of Narita instead of the one leaving from Haneda that I'd booked, which is altogether a lot easier to handle, what with Haneda being an hour and a half bus ride away, and it being just about 2am EST at this point (around 16:00 Japan time). So, I was led through a maze of Narita, into customs lines and drug-check lines, by my very polite and efficient guide, who utterly failed to point out any of the forms I needed to fill out before sticking me on the lines for handing them in. Eventually, though, around 17:30, I was on a bus that took me out to the little plane that would take me to Hiroshima airport at something like 19:15 - about an hour before Sarah knew to come and get me.

After waiting an hour, I had a mind-shatteringly-awesome reunion with Sarah, who took me out into the rather chilly, Japanese world outside the airport. Cars are boxier, drive on the left, and we parked in some sort of magic car-elevator/storage system at the toyoko inn in Higashihiroshima-sho (東広島). Here's the view from our room!



I think I've been at this long enough now, so, Miyajima and further shenanigans will come in their own time.

-Matt