oops!

貴社いよいよご清栄のこととお喜び申し上げます。平素は格別のお引き立てを賜り、ありがたく厚く御礼申し上げます。さて (If you can read this, you know a lot more Japanese than I do…..)

Well, sorry about not posting anything, but I’ve had a really hectic past couple days! On Monday, I left on our trip to Japan. This flight was split up into two sections with our first flight going to Honolulu and then connecting from there to Narita International Airport in Tokyo. For our first leg of our flight, my dad and I were lucky enough to get upgraded to first-class! This was a godsend because the flight was around eight hours and for those who know me personally, I am not average size. On the flight, I opened up my laptop and threw in the movie “Lost in Translation” and let the irony set in. (I suggest to anyone flying overseas to bring a DVD player or laptop computer which is DVD compatible!) Once we arrived in Honolulu, we checked our tickets to see what our next gate was. Lo and behold, there wasn’t a gate number printed on our tickets! We asked around and finally found a departure display which showed international flights. We found our flight and got to our gate with plenty of time, so we decided to check out this garden they had in the airport. This garden was actually three distinctly separate gardens (Japanese, Zen Buddhist and Traditional Hawaiian) connected together. These were great places for pictures and the ponds there held some behemoth koi. (One was about four and a half feet long!) We then boarded our plane to Narita, which was another eight hour flight, but this time, we were back in coach. L Finally, we get to Narita. We get our bags, go through customs (really easy here) and grab the Narita Express all the way to Shinjuku, the city in which our hotel is. We then meander through Shinjuku Station (known as the world’s busiest terminal and also the one with the worst documented platforms!) We find our hotel and leave our bags in our room, then go out on the town. Shinjuku is known for being the part of town which never sleeps (except the pachinko parlors, which close at 11). With this in mind, my dad and I find an udon noodle shop down a small alley which was suggested to us by the concierge. After the excellent udon there, we moved down to the main street areas of Shinjuku. There, we see pachinko for the first time and are constantly pursued by people who want us to see their “shows” (yes, those ones). We keep puttering around until we become tired and then make our way back to the hotel. In our hotel room, there was our first introduction to the Japanese Toiletry System. I am amazed these things don’t just wipe our butts for us… but it does give a refreshing spray and blow dry ( #-o ). After that ‘refreshing' experience, we finally went to sleep.