Turbulence

I don't even know where to begin. There's a million things all zooming around in my brain and I can't concentrate on one thing for more than a couple of seconds before moving  on to the other.

As boring as it is to tell a story in chronological order I think that's just what I'm going to have to do in order to be able to accurately capture and convey the last... however long it's been. A little over a day? That sounds about right.

So, after a half hour walk whilst watching Futurama on the fancy treadmills in the Marriot's weight room at DIA, Sam and I returned to the room; then she, Mom and I went down to the lobby and got snacks. Ate snacks, watched TV, I snuggled up against Mom and fell asleep.

Woke up at 2 AM to my alarm, kind of confused, but got up and showered and got ready anyway. Then the three of us caught the shuttle to the airport.

Got there, check in at the Frontier desk, no problem, everything's dandy. Andrew and Will show up, then they check in, then we all walk towards security. At the point where Mom and Sam can't follow us anymore comes a very tearful goodbye (tears are mostly mine) with hugs galore, and then they leave and Andrew, Will and I go through security.

That takes about five minutes--luckily so, since as soon as we got in line, everybody else departing through DIA that morning also queued up behind us--and we have time to kill before we board, so we go to the food court so Andrew and Will can get some breakfast (I having already eaten).

We board onto Frontier, sit down, and my heart at this point is pounding frantically against my ribcage wanting out, out, out. Since it's the first time I've ever flown, the boys graciously allow me the window seat. We taxi out of our gate and down the path towards the runway, all the while my lovely morbid mind running amok with images of flaming chunks of debris from the aftermath of a terrible freak accident that befell our aircraft just after takeoff/during the flight/just before landing. I'm also trying my damnedest not to cry, because I'm scared and I really, really want my mommy, so I stare out the window with my sunglasses on and watch as the tar mat rolls lazily by. Then, lo and behold, we get to the long stretch of runway and start  gaining speed, and the small aircraft starts to shake, but not too bad, and I'm staring at our shadow on the ground watching it compact like an oven-baked Shrinky Dink as our wheels depart solid ground for not-so-solid air.

Once I realize we're airborne and all still alive and well, I look over and Will and Andrew are both giving me these expectant looks, like, "Well?" and I have to clench my jaw shut in a grimace so I don't laugh out loud at myself for making such a big deal out of it.

All in all the flight from Denver to LA was short and sweet, without many bumps along the way. We had complementary TV with our tickets, which we didn't know, and watching Cash Cab on Discovery certainly helped the time pass quickly.

We get to LA perfectly on time. I call Mom and Grandma while we amble towards our Korean Air gate. During the three-hour layover I get six chapters of Ender's Game read. Then we board our Korean Air flight, which is a much, much bigger plane. Frontier had 23 rows of six seats (three on each side of one aisle), and Korean Air had fifty-something rows of nine seats (three, aisle, three, aisle)--except for in first class and stuff 'cause those seats like, fold out so you can actually sleep flat. Wow.

Anyway, I'm just gonna take a little second here and drool over how awesome Korean Air is. We had free entertainment, so free choices of movies, music, some games (even though the controls were crappy), and the fight attendants were just so damn cute! Our food was great (though no vegetarian options to speak of, which didn't surprise me but still disappointed me), the seats were fairly comfortable, and I had plenty of leg room. Oh, and they gave us little pillows, a blanket, a toiletry kit, and headphones for the entertainment system.

The fight from LA to Tokyo was a little over 11 hours, which felt like days to me. I hadn't let myself sleep at all on the way over from Denver, so all my rest I had to get on that flight--which I did get a few winks, but none of that deep, restorative slumber the doctors are all raging about. It was mostly just me getting into a comfortable position with the chair reclined as far as it would go and closing my eyes and zoning out to the steady low drone of the engine. I'd say, since I woke up Sunday morning, I've gotten about four or five actual hours of sleep.

So, we land in Narita airport (holy gawd can you say humidity?) and go to baggage claim and have another one of my unfounded paranoias put to rest as my luggage comes round on the conveyer. However, I must pause here and note how fucking shitty this suitcase I've borrowed is. The handle is broken off the top (which I didn't realize until I was loading it into Mom's car on Sunday), and the supports on the front bottom end (you know, the end with the wheels on it?) somehow completely snapped off during transport, so now my luggage tips forward and is a pain in the ass to get to roll, and go on escalators.

OH GAWD FUCKING ESCALATORS. Okay, so, real quick, after we get our luggage we go through customs which is a breeze, save for Andrew whose beef jerky is confiscated, and then get our JR railway passes from the office in the airport (we'll be using these to travel around for a week starting on Friday). This is when I really start to have issues with this POS suitcase, because it keeps tipping over and not cooperating and hitting my ankles and being an overall bitch.

 (times like, a thousand bazillion)

We go to catch a train out of the airport to the part of Tokyo where we're staying for the next two days and three nights, and that's a lovely hour ride through a more rural part of the city. I've never seen so many huge, green gatherings of trees in my life!

But, then the real fun starts once we get off that train to begin our hell transfers, because, guess what, we caught Tokyo Station at rush hour! And when I mean rush hour, I mean it's seriously "Either sprint or get the fuck out of the way."

Now, if this isn't bad enough, I've got this wayward piece of luggage to drag behind me, up and down escalators, around the throng of Japanese men and women whose everyday commute I'm interrupting with my baka gaijin antics, into trains and out of trains, and I swear to effing Jesus Christ I've never had a worse panic attack in my life. I'm melting from the humidity and having to lug this suitcase and a jam-packed backpack and purse around, there are literally thousands of people whose language I can barely understand rushing around me in every direction like salmon in the ultimate upriver dash, and I haven't hardly slept at all in the past twenty-four hours.

Needless to say I freaked out a bit, and I'm still kind of on edge.

 (here's a quick idea of what the view from our room is)

We finally got to our lodgings and dropped off our stuff in our room and went to find a place to eat, but ended up forgetting the directions we'd been given and wandering for a good hour since we'd neglected to bring a map we could understand with us, before we finally gave up and backtracked, stopping by a 7-11 to grab a quick dinner before returning. I have to say though, dinner was good. I had soba and an onigiri, and damn it tasted delicious after wandering around in an unfamiliar city, hell, an unfamiliar country for nearly ninety minutes.

I think I packed too much. No, I know I packed too much, and it's gonna fucking suck the next week or so travelling with all the "necessities" I've burdened myself with. Our host here is amazingly kind though, and when I told him about my baggage issues he immediately researched on the internet an area where I might find good, cheap suitcases to replace it with. So, even though it'll be heavy, it'll at least be easier to maneuver through crowded train stations and between hasty transfers than the behemoth I'm currently stuck with.

I was a wreck earlier. Once I finished eating my soba  and onigiri I had a moment where I had to tear everything out of my suitcase and backpack and purse and organize it; mind you, our room is the size of a dorm room at your standard university (so, about ten by ten, maybe a bit more), so that wasn't exactly fun.

Another issue that I wasn't quite prepared for was culture shock. I thought, god, I've been around Japanese culture since I was pre-natal, I'm basically as Japanese as any white girl could hope to be--what culture shock? But, oh god, I hate to admit it, there is. I feel so out of placed and so mismatched with my surroundings. Even though I speak the language and can understand it for the most part I still feel completely and utterly incapable when actually faced with utilizing it with strangers (i.e. the girls who checked me out at 7-11, spoke so fast I barely caught how much i owed them), and I feel like every Japanese citizen I pass is staring at me, willing me to go home and get out of their country. Walking around trying to find a place to eat hit that home for me pretty hardcore.

Oh, and I'm also intensely homesick.

I know this will all pass once I've given my haggard mind some real, honest-to-goodness rest, and also since I've reorganized and now vented it out of my system.

PS

I just kind of threw in some pictures for the hell of it. There are more. I need to upload them somewhere that doesn't have lame limits like Photobucket or  Flickr and that doesn't suck like Facebook, so once I figure that out, there will be more.

Now, sleep. For a better tomorrow.