Good morning, West.

It's 5:30 am... and I've BEEN up. Jet lag.
But that's fine, cuz I"l be able to write before the city wakes up and sucks me in. It's SO interesting.
I'm going to write every night that I can. So, I guess I'll start off.

Security was easy. :-) I guess my huge bright sunglasses didnt look suspicious after all.
The plane flight was where it got interesting. Daddy and I sat next to a man, who had window seat. So, i scooted in next to him so I'd be able to catch glimpses of the Rocky Mountains and such. I sat down. "Hallo," said the dude. I replied with a whole sentence in English... and he couldnt respond. For the next 18 hours I was having Japanese lessons with a Brazilian man, speaking to me in Portuguese, as i was responding in Spanish. If you thought having Mr. Altouvas was complicated... pfft. I thoroughly enjoyed it though. I learned a lot.... about Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese. Literally, we talked for about 14 hours of my trip.

SO, we land. I exchange email addresses with the Aoki (the dude), so that we can show me the fireworks in Yakahama at some point during my stay. The Japanese airport was a totally different world. lol, people were scared of swine flu, so they had on the masks. It looked scary. We catch a bus... and travel for 80 mins, or so. On the left side of the road, of course. ALL the cars are tiny (even the semitrucks) and hybrid with HUGE gps systems, which have a television system installed so the passengers can be entertained... but I saw drivers watching as well. WE drove on a highway that had ZERO litter on the sides, and had huge sound blocking walls in each side when we drove through residential areas. The highway was stacked on top pf eachother, double-decker. The buildings of Tokyo went on for and hour! The city is CRAZY big!!! The drive was a great welcome to the city, we got to see everything from far away- the lights, the signs, the 5 story high advertisements. it was a LOT to take in.
We made it to the hotel. Got to our cute little room. Dad was hungry- we left in search of food. The only place dad wanted to go was a little tiny shack restaurant... with the Hunchback of Notre Dame as the hostess and waiter... matty, greasy hair... nasty beard... sweaty pits... let's just say- I didnt eat.

Soon after- we were sleeping.