Man, oh, man, what a trip. This post will be lacking in pictures, just to make up for all the photos in the last one. I can't express to you how mentally tired I am. It's been a long day. Or two days. Or some span of time.
So, after I posted last time, Scott rushed Katie and me off to the airport, and we got there with 90 minutes before departure. Cutting it a little close? Oh, yeah. But there was practically nobody in LAX, so we got checked in and through security in no time. We sat down to wait by our gate around 12:30a Sunday. We boarded a little while later, and took off a little earlier than planned. I think. I mean, I remember taking off, but that's kind of it. We were out. Except I can't sleep well on planes. In order to have a good night's sleep, must have very specific conditions met, and even under the best of circumstances, sleep can still evade me. I'm a master at not sleeping. Anyway, no matter which of the three positions in which I could find myself--chair leaned back with pillow behind my head, pillow on the tray laying on my right side, pillow on the tray laying on my left side--I was completely and utterly uncomfortable. But my body was exhausted. So I existed for the next eight hours in a very strange waking-dream state that produces eerie dreams of sunrises in the plane and talking to Katie, although I knew she was asleep. It was all very frustrating.
Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore. To wake myself up officially, I went to the bathroom, and upon my return, Katie informed me it was 9:30a our time. Which explained why I felt so awake. I hadn't realized so much time had passed. I managed to secure us food from the very friendly Chinese stewardesses (all the food was free, by the way, which was fantastic), and we made it through the last couple of hours, cruising over Russia and northern China watching TV and movies. For anyone interested, I recommend "The Artist." It's pretty good.
We landed in Beijing, China at 5:20a, and got through immigration, no problem. Although we did stop to wonder why we had to go through immigration... Never got an answer. We were finally awake enough to really notice how much we stood out--me with my fiery red hair, Katie with her bright blonde hair. We were definitely the minority. After some confusion regarding the exchange rate between US dollars and Chinese yuan, we got some fun souvenirs, and headed to our gate. We were but four hours away from Osaka, Japan!
We landed, and headed into the airport, raring to use our language skills at last. We immediately began to wonder if we'd even need them--all the signs were in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and English. We decided that was for the best. If the airport people thought we were just dumb Americans, they'd make things as simple as possible. One little snag going through customs--we didn't have an address or phone number of the places we were staying, aka our home stay families. The customs man was very patient with me as I explained the issue in broken Japanese, and finally we resolved it, but not before the other employees began directing the people in line behind us to other queues. Oops.
We made it through customs, and even made it to the train without too much trouble. Buying a train ticket turned out to be not too bad, kind of like buying a Metro ticket, and we got on the right train, headed into Osaka. Our stop was Shin-Imamiya, and our hotel was supposed to be a mere 2-minute walk. We had a great plan to head to the station via a very nice train, walk up a block or two, then cross the street, and we'd be there! Well... that's not exactly how it worked.
See, once we got off at out station, somehow the direction we headed according to the map that we'd photographed off of the airport computer was not the one we were walking down in real life. I did ask a lady for help--in pretty good Japanese, I might add--but I think I flustered her into feeling like she had to answer in English, which she must not have felt too confident about, so her answer was a little difficult. Finally, after standing around looking totally lost for a good 10 minutes, a kindly man walked up to us and said in heavily-accented, yet well-practiced English, "Can I help you?" Katie and I were so relieved, we just spilled out, "YES, PLEASE!" He pulled out his trusty map of Osaka and located us and where we needed to go, then escorted us to the Metro station that would get us there. He was so kind.
We got to the station just fine, but then we didn't know where to go, so Katie asked the guards at the ticket booth, and they gave us great directions on which exit to take to get back topside. Except, once we were there, we didn't know where to go again. So I ran into a nearby Family Mart, praying Katie wouldn't get attacked while I was gone by the overly-friendly guy who had just given me the hang-ten gesture and smiled at us like we were old friends, and asked the man at the counter for help finding out hotel, knowing it had to be in the vicinity. As it turned out, it was a mere block away, and we found it! An hour and a half later than I said we'd come.
We entered the south door, and the man there said he didn't have me on the list. Well, that was upsetting. That's when he told us there were two hotels, North and South. We showed him my confirmation email, and he laughed, directing us to go to the North hotel. So we moved ourselves about 10 feet north and got our keys to our room at last. I am so exhausted. But, my homework is done, and I'm ready for a night of some severe relaxation!
Tomorrow should be interesting, since we're probably going to be waking up around 4:30a due to jet lag. Should be a full, fun day of travel!
