Packing, Flying, Nintendo DS with Rakubiki Jiten
I didn’t pack for Japan until the day before my flight and mostly just that night so I stayed up very late. I figured that was a good idea anyway so I’d have to sleep on the plane. I brought a bookbag and a small suitcase only. The bookbag had small bathroom things (shampoo, body wash, razor, etc) 6 changes of clothes (shirts and boxers), one extra pair of shorts, one towel, and miscellaneous things (lock, guidebook, Nintendo DS, camera, flash cards, pen, energy bars, etc). I could have fit more in but that was already more than I was planning on fitting and the bag was pretty heavy.
Also, the Nintendo DS was mainly for the dictionary. Before I left, I bought a DS Lite, Mario Kart, and Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten, a Japanese English dictionary for the DS. It’s a very good dictionary with handwritten kanji input (great recognition algorithm) and would be perfect except you can only jump to English words, not Japanese. That means if I’m looking up a word and I can’t read a Japanese word, I have to write it by hand instead of just jumping to it. The dictionary was meant for Japanese people, which is why it’s set up that way. That is a pretty big inconvenience, but still for $50 I got most of the functionality of a $400 electronic dictionary, so it’ll do. Also, I can’t rely on it too much, which is good.
All I packed in my suitcase were some more clothes (with one pair of long pants), and my computer. Then I slept for one hour and got up before dawn to catch the early flight. Mom and Dad took me to the airport and seemed fine when I was still there at least. I checked my suitcase and took a 2.5 hour flight to Dallas. The Dallas airport was huge and I had to take a bus to the international terminal where my Japanese experience started. I found my gate easily by all the Japanese people near it and when I was waiting I tried to understand them. I heard a kid talking to his mom and looked up words I didn’t know. I also tried to call mom from a payphone but she couldn’t hear me and the phone ate 75minutes of talk time. I called again with a credit card which I knew would be overcharged but she’d worry if I didn’t call.
The flight over was a harder than I thought. I’ve been to Europe twice and barely remember the flight being a bother at all, but this seemed much longer. I slept for awhile but then after my first few hours I couldn’t really fall asleep again no matter how comfortable I got. I’m small and resourceful and I can get pretty comfortable, but I couldn’t get past half asleep. The movies were okay but they only showed 2 or 3 I was interested in over the full 13 hours. There was also Japanese TV but it wasn’t nearly as good as most Japanese TV. I also listened to the J-Pop (Japanese Pop) radio while trying to sleep to get in the mood. I was trying to convince myself I was going to Japan but it didn’t really feel like it. The lady beside me was some Japanese businesswoman; we didn’t talk but she was a nice sit-beside-silently buddy. The flight attendant quickly realized she didn’t need to ask what I wanted to drink and just started bringing me milk at drink times. Also the meals were pretty good and bigger than I remembered. We’d get 5 or 6 things for each meal. I also filled out an immigration form saying why I was there and where I’d be living and such. I wasn’t sure if I should fill it out in English or Japanese but I figured I’d better start assuming things were Japanese. It was a little weird to use Japanese for the first time officially.
Finally we got to Japan and for some reason made a giant circle around the whole country before we landed at Kansai. I thought the circle was to get the right angle and was just huge since we were going fast, but he did another small loop around the airport to get in line again so I had no idea what that was about. My first view of Japan was some island probably off Kyushu. Finally we landed at Kansai and I got off.
