How I got to Japan

I flew, like everyone else, but I used up my frequent flyer miles on United. This meant cattle status, but it wasn't too bad. Also, this meant I couldn't just choose any old date for flying. I had to stay longer than I had hoped for originally, but of course this a good thing!

I flew on August 16th but with the 13 hour flight, and crossing the dateline, I landed on August 17th. Alan met me at the airport. At Narita airport, there are designated Meeting Places, painted bright orange, with "Meeting Place" in English! However, if you don't happen to know about the Meeting Place, it's kind of useless. But, now you know about it, if you ever find yourself meeting someone at Narita, and you won't have to wander around looking for your person, as Alan and I did. Alan wasn't too hard to find as he was dragging 2 large suitcases, a laptop computer, and a stuffed book bag.

We made our way to Asakusa (1.5 hours on two trains), an old part of Tokyo. I found pronouncing most Japanese words (read in English) to not be too hard, as they're already phonetically spelled for us English language types. This one, however, is not pronounced A-saw-kuza, which is what I mangled for awhile, but A-sock-sa. We stayed here for a couple of nights, in the Kamogawa hotel. We had a Japanese style room, which meant futons on the floor, and cushions to sit on, but an attached (tiny) bathroom, which is not Japanese style.

After we showered (very humid!), we left to go to the Arai's, Alan's host family. The Arai's live in a nice residential area, 1.5 hours from our hotel. Besides taking very good care of Alan, the Arai's were accomodating Linnea, a Swedish student studying Japanese for her second summer (this after graduating from Columbia University, NY). We had dessert (although I had to ask Alan later about that for confirmation), chatted and then Alan and I made our way back.