Well I know Chels talked about my travel day but here is what I have to say about it.
My flight out of El Paso, TX departed at 6:30am on Saturday, March 27th and was scheduled to arrive in Japan at 2:20pm on Sunday, March 28th. To start my long day of traveling I checked in at the airport at 6:00am and the boarding time was 5:55am. So, yes I was late. One of my checked bags weight 68 pounds so I had to pay an overweight fee, and if I had 2 more pounds they wouldn’t have even touched it. Then I run to security and ducked under the ropes to get right to the front and start taking my shoes off and getting my stuff in the bins. Then of course they had to open my carry-on luggage and check it. Then I couldn’t get it repacked so I just had to carry a couple of things. Now again almost running through the airport to get to my gate. I made it in time and said by to Chelsae, Reagan, and my mom. I was the last person on the flight and they shut the door right behind me.
Flew to Houston and had a short layover before I boarded the 777 to Japan. The flight was 13.5 hour flight but actually wasn’t too bad. I slept some and watched Men Who Stare at Goats, Back to the Future, Bourne Ultimatum, episode of Modern Marvels, and some Simpson episodes, so I stayed entertained. After landing we had to go through immigration which ended up taking about 1.5 hours. Then when Seth and I went to get our luggage there wasn’t a carousel with our flight on it. So we asked a guy and he pointed to an area and our bags were already loaded on a push cart for us. We took are luggage and had it shipped to our apartment in Tsukuba for about $25, it was well worth it. Then bought our bus ticket and started our way to Tsukuba. By now it was 5:30pm and we were supposed to be meeting Chihiro (our contact) at this time and we still had a 1.5 hour bus ride. So I emailed her hoping she received email on her phone to let her now that we were late. She did get the email and she continued to wait.
We arrived at the Tsukuba bus center and finally met Chihiro after a 100 emails between each other over the last couple of months. It was nice to finally put a face to her emails. She took us to a restaurant in the shopping center for our first Japanese meal. It was a restaurant that mostly severed Japanese noodles and I ordered a tempura shrimp noodle bowl. It was really good and the shrimp were pretty big. As we were going to the restaurant Chihiro asked if we could use chop sticks since they wouldn’t have any forks at the restaurant and she was surprised when we told her that we could use them.
After dinner we went the Ninomiya House which is to be our new home for the year. I were pleasantly surprise how nice the apartment complex was. My apartment is the corner unit on the 5th floor so about half my walls are windows and I have three balcony’s. Here is a quick picture of the living room, there will be more to come.
My flight out of El Paso, TX departed at 6:30am on Saturday, March 27th and was scheduled to arrive in Japan at 2:20pm on Sunday, March 28th. To start my long day of traveling I checked in at the airport at 6:00am and the boarding time was 5:55am. So, yes I was late. One of my checked bags weight 68 pounds so I had to pay an overweight fee, and if I had 2 more pounds they wouldn’t have even touched it. Then I run to security and ducked under the ropes to get right to the front and start taking my shoes off and getting my stuff in the bins. Then of course they had to open my carry-on luggage and check it. Then I couldn’t get it repacked so I just had to carry a couple of things. Now again almost running through the airport to get to my gate. I made it in time and said by to Chelsae, Reagan, and my mom. I was the last person on the flight and they shut the door right behind me.
Flew to Houston and had a short layover before I boarded the 777 to Japan. The flight was 13.5 hour flight but actually wasn’t too bad. I slept some and watched Men Who Stare at Goats, Back to the Future, Bourne Ultimatum, episode of Modern Marvels, and some Simpson episodes, so I stayed entertained. After landing we had to go through immigration which ended up taking about 1.5 hours. Then when Seth and I went to get our luggage there wasn’t a carousel with our flight on it. So we asked a guy and he pointed to an area and our bags were already loaded on a push cart for us. We took are luggage and had it shipped to our apartment in Tsukuba for about $25, it was well worth it. Then bought our bus ticket and started our way to Tsukuba. By now it was 5:30pm and we were supposed to be meeting Chihiro (our contact) at this time and we still had a 1.5 hour bus ride. So I emailed her hoping she received email on her phone to let her now that we were late. She did get the email and she continued to wait.
We arrived at the Tsukuba bus center and finally met Chihiro after a 100 emails between each other over the last couple of months. It was nice to finally put a face to her emails. She took us to a restaurant in the shopping center for our first Japanese meal. It was a restaurant that mostly severed Japanese noodles and I ordered a tempura shrimp noodle bowl. It was really good and the shrimp were pretty big. As we were going to the restaurant Chihiro asked if we could use chop sticks since they wouldn’t have any forks at the restaurant and she was surprised when we told her that we could use them.
After dinner we went the Ninomiya House which is to be our new home for the year. I were pleasantly surprise how nice the apartment complex was. My apartment is the corner unit on the 5th floor so about half my walls are windows and I have three balcony’s. Here is a quick picture of the living room, there will be more to come.
8:42 AM |
Category: |
0
comments
Posts
Comments (0)