Konichiwa Tokyo!

Tuesday, July 28th

Alright….I’m here.

The overall journey from Chicago to Tokyo in itself was a pleasant one… smooth flight and great service (I flew ANA for the first time – their in-flight entertainment is great! They have so much variety to choose from in your own personal screen that they make a four hour flight from San Diego to Chicago by United seem like an eternal torture). And to top it off, my luggage was waiting for me with open arms once I passed customs! I didn’t had to wait in the conveyor belt for it to arrive, which was a nice change for those who are familiar with my luggage not physically arriving at the same time with me to places ☺ . And I guess the cherry on top would be that I didn’t have much of a jet lag as I was expecting, considering that I was in the plane for 13 hours (by the way, I didn’t see the sky turn dark that whole flight! I was pretty much under daylight for 21 hours straight. I work up at 6:30 am to catch my flight, took off from Chicago at 10:50 a.m., arrived in Tokyo around 2 p.m., plus 4 more hours of daylight. You do the math).

As some of you know my affinity with French culture (some say borderline obsession…but that’s going off topic), the very first people that I met in Japan were… French (eh, ironic). But I wasn’t even trying looking for them like a needle in a haystack as I would do back in America (kidding…sorta). They just kinda…came? These couple who were sitting with me on the Kensei line train from Narita airport to downtown Tokyo were speaking French, and then naturally(?), of course…we started talking. Then when I arrived in the hostel, it turned out two of my roommates were – yup, you guessed it – were French too! (by the way, the people who know me well are probably thinking that I staged this “random” encounters..hahaha. I can sense them shaking their head and giggling as they read that part).

Besides that, it was still kind of hard to fathom that I finally arrived in Tokyo. It was still kinda hard to form my first impression when I was so tired. I got my stuff settled, showered, and walked around the neighborhood where my hostel was located. Then later that night, the three of us (francophones :) went out to a local bar (haha, well, so much for it being local considering the only Japanese people that were there were the people working there. They have an international guess base apparently).