Japan Day #1

      The last 48 hours have been incredibly long with traveling and jet lag, but they have been extremely worthwhile. Even as I write at the moment I am struggling with jet lag. My urges to sleep throughout the day haven’t been as bad as I had assumed they would be, but it’s now about 8 p.m. in Tokyo (4 a.m. in Utah) and my eyes are having a hard time staying open. Thankfully I’ll get to sleep in just a little bit.

      Our trip to Tokyo started with one of the worst flights I’ve been on, and it was the shorter of the two flights I would have to take to get to Japan. In case you don’t know this about me, I don’t really enjoy flying that much. I love traveling, but getting to my destination is the one part that I dread. So you can imagine my horror when I learned that I’d have to spend 10+ hours on a plane flying over the ocean. I was not looking forward to it in the slightest. I’m also really prone to motion sickness, so when turbulence hits (Delta likes calls it “rough air”) I tend to start feeling pretty sick. Our two hour flight to Seattle had awful turbulence, so I was just spending my time trying to not puke in a paper bag. Add only getting three hours of sleep the night before to the equation and you get a sick and emotional Courtney. Thankfully we had a long enough layover to let me walk around and eat a little food to get me going again. Our next flight was long, but they serve you food and let you watch movies and stuff, so while it felt like forever, it was a lot better of a flight. I usually don’t sleep well while traveling, so I didn’t sleep much on the flight there, but I am definitely making myself sleep on the flight back home in a couple weeks.

     When we landed at the Haneda Tokyo Airport it was about 11:30 p.m. Saturday night, meaning that in our whole travel time we had left on Friday, skipped all of Saturday, and went right into Sunday. I had also been awake for 24 hours by this point so I was definitely ready for bed. Caitlin, Tanner, and I went through Customs (now I finally have something in my passport!) and met up with Mom and Dad. We caught the last train for the night and took a taxi home. And then I finally got to sleep!

     Waking up the next morning was pretty rough, and then Dad told us we weren't allowed to sleep at all until bedtime to help get over the jet lag. Thankfully my jet lag hasn't been too bad though! Mom drove us to church, which was quite an experience because they drive on the left side of the road, making right and left turns really confusing. After church we walked down the street to a nearby park (“koen” in Japanese). The parks in Japan are really about walking trails and ponds rather than being all manicured and perfect like we have them in America.

     Later that day Caitlin, Tanner, and I had the chance to go eat dinner with the Young Single Adults in the stake, which was an awesome experience. They taught us difference Japanese phrases, and a few of them are in a J-Pop genre band that is pretty well known here! One of the phrases I learned was “ee-kay-men.” Obviously that’s not how you spell it, but since I don’t know actual Japanese, we’ll stick with phonetics. It means “ridiculously handsome” – a phrase that I’ll be saving to say to you, Nick ;)

     Also, as a random side note, their toilets here are top notch. They automatically lift the lid and the seat (if needed), warm the seat, flush, and close the lid for you. Dad jokingly says he’s made it a goal to go the whole two years without having to touch a toilet.