6/1 Arriving in Kashiwa

 Last night I finally arrived in Japan! Traveling here was hectic and I'm still exhausted (mainly due to jet lag and the fact that I'm operating on about 4 hours of sleep from the past 2 or 3 nights). Here's a series of events that happened on the way to Japan -

• Our flight from Phoenix to Seattle was delayed, so we ended up being in Seattle 2 hours later than expected.
• I ate a total of 5 full meals. I wasn't expecting Korean Air to feed us as well as they did so I ate twice before the 16 hour flight, then proceeded to gain a food baby through Korean Air. Hey, no complaints here. 

Yes, I took a picture of airplane food. My 5th meal of the day.

• I got burnt on the thigh by seaweed soup. It was great. The flight attendants were so worried that they checked up on me about 5-6 times throughout the flight, and asked if I needed to go to the hospital once we landed in Korea. (Don't worry it's not a bad burn, just a small blister).
• We were supposed to have 50 minutes in Korea to get from one airline to the next, but because of the delays from the Phoenix-Seattle and Seattle-Korea flights we only had 25 minutes to get through the entire Seoul-Incheon airport. Luckily, once we landed a nice crew worker from the next flight was waiting for people that were going to be on the Seoul to Narita flight, and we all got to follow him through the airport. And by follow I mean chase after. Grace and I were sweating and puffing once we got on the plane, the flight attendants immediately gave us a cup of water before we even found our seats. We were still 10 minutes late to that flight, but they were nice enough to not leave without the people coming from the Seattle-Korea flight prior. Props to that crew member who led us to the gate and gave us a good workout to burn off the bibimbap. 

A picture from the plane when first landing in Korea. I didn't get any good ones of landing in Japan since it was already dark out. 

Traveling is so much fun. 

Once we got to Narita, we were so tired and kept getting confused by the train system here. We eventually did figure out how to get to Kashiwa, and after going the exact opposite way of our hotel and realizing that we're a bit lost, I asked a guy for directions and he decided to walk us there himself. Props to that guy as well!

This is the first thing that the 3 of us took pictures of when landing in Narita. We looked like the ultimate tourists. 

So now I'm in my hotel, and I guess I got my own room for at least the first week of this program. Sweet! 

The view from my room. 

And that's the recent update. It's 8:00 a.m. right now, and I'm operating on about 4 hours of sleep from the past 3 days. My traveling companions and I decided to explore the surrounding area a bit, and I'll probably get some coffee while I'm at it.