Japan

Japan was interesting. I got up at 4:00am Thursday to get the 5:00 airport shuttle that took an hour and 30 min to get to the airport. Flight was at 8 and I landed shortly before 9. I had to go to the consulate from the apt, which was not too hard; I just took the sub from the apt to the consulate. Nothing was in English but there were transliterations of the names of places on maps. I found out which stop to get off at from the info booth at the airport and was on my way. After I got off at the station I started heading towards the consulate which was about a 10ish min walk from the stop. Well I got kinda confused and took an early street and so wandered for about 5min in a neighbourhood but figured out where I needed to be with out too much difficulty. Applied for the Visa (took all of 5 min) then went to the mall that was right next to the consulate (by this time its about 11ish). The mall was a Western-style mall and it felt so nice to wander around it for a bit (I hate ahopping and malls and did not really miss then untill I was at the one in Japan - malls here are more a bunch of vendors who sell anything and everything and the vendors change from week to week). I got a few things then decided I was tired and wanted to get to the hotel. The hotel (I was told by the guy who got me my ticket) was a 20min walk from the consulate. I was too tired to figure out where I needed to go so I decided to take a taxi (I had the printed invoice for my hotel that I was to give to the front desk and the invoice was in Japanese so all I had to do was show it to the taxi driver). It was a good thing I did. It was no-where near a 20min walk - it was a 30min taxi drive (and cost about $20). If I had tried to walk it I would have still been wandering around Fukoka (the city). The airport was 2x as close as the consulate. So 19,345 yen later I was in my room and slept an hour. I did not do too much after that - I was tired and had grading to do so I pretty much stayed in my room for the remainder of the day getting that done (incedentally I'm very thankful for the movies I have on my cptr there were all of 4 channels on the TV and none of them were in English.) So up the next morning and breakfast in their resturant (strangest breakfast buffet I've ever seen - they had the usual breakfast-y things but then things that made one go "???"; things like salad and mashed potatos). Then back to the consulate. There was a subway station near the hotel so I decided not to take the taxi again and figured out what I needed to do and it was all good. Picked up the visa and went back to the mall, wandered around the city some but as I had a tonne of stuff I got tired and decided to see if i could get an earlier flight out. So got to the apt at 3 and there was a 3:35 flight and here I am!! On the flight back there were twin girls across the aisle and we made friends with out speaking to eachother - just making faces at eachother. They were soooo cute and I had to take a picture as they were leaving. Japan is very clean and does a good job of mixing the modern and the traditional. There were more traditional style houses with the walled gardens and bonsai trees right next to high-rises and business. I saw as many people on bikes as I did in cars...

Ok - and again with the not wanting me to publish pictures. If I can I'll put some up later.