arrival

  So this is written sittin’ at Haneda airport with no wi-fi. I’ve still got that bobbing feeling in my head from yesterday’s long plane ride. Strange how that happens isn’t it? It’s like that ghost feeling you get at night after you’ve been at the amusement park riding roller coasters for a day. Or is that just me?... Anyway, check-in for my domestic flight to Fukuoka doesn’t start for another two hours…

  So the flight to Japan was a pretty interesting one, to say the least. Well, the beginning of the flight from LA to Narita was. Here’s what went down.

  I had bought the airplane ticket pretty early – early enough to get a nice isle and bulkhead seat. Good legroom + aisle access. Anywho, of course these seats usually accommodate those with little children. And a few minutes after getting situated, I was approached by an attendant who asked if I wanted to exchange seats to accommodate a parent with a child. It would be in exchange for an aisle seat. Who am I to refuse that without looking inconsiderate.

  Anyway, walking back to the other seat revealed a sticky situation – the seat was occupied and the people there were in the process of swapping people around so that families could sit together. I thought, whatever, I just needed a seat to sleep in. So I sat in the seat next to the isle seat, no biggie.

  So later, the attendant who offered the swap came back and was like, why aren’t you In an isle seat? This isn’t good, I feel bad. After more searching, and not being able to find an isle seat, she said she would continue to see what she could do. Flight takes off.

  After climbing to altitute, she comes back and says “We’re going to move you to 10D” and then she whispers “business class”. Hiding smiles, I gracefully accept. And so! My first business class experience was on a plane from LA to Japan. Unfortunately, I was too modest to take full advantage of the services – I dunno, something feels off about requesting a ton of food/drinks after being upgraded for free. What would you do? Hey, I did get a complimentary travel kit and slippers though…

  Still, the reclining chair and fancier meals were fantastic – couldn’t have asked for much more. Though, the people next to me had at least eight glasses of wine… But then again, they paid for it, I suppose. No pictures from the flight though – I might have had I been in economy section, but I got more self-conscious from the fact that I was upgraded for free. You’ll just have to believe me on this one.

  Since I arrived yesterday, and my flight to Fukuoka is today, I stayed at a hotel near Haneda airport. And you know what the first thing I did when I got in? Checked out the toilet. Heard stories and seen pictures of fancy toilets with water that shoots up your butt. This one wasn’t too fancy, but it certainly filled the water shower requirement… Yes, I tested it out. And yes, I was surprised at the velocity of the water stream. [SHOWER] is a bit misleading… It’s a… different feeling… unless you’ve been shot in the butt with a supersoaker before.

  On another note, I already knew I was bad at speaking Japanese, but coming here further reinforces the fact. (Yeah, it’s a little bit harsh assessemtn – being my first time in a Japanese environment – but that doesn’t change the fact that I suck). So yesterday at the airport bus stop, after getting the courage to ask the bus driver whether or not it was the correct bus to my hotel, I went up to him and asked something along the lines of, 「これは「おとりいしんかん」行きのバスですか」And he replied, 「Yes」. I was like, man, my Japanese must’ve been really bad if he had to reply in English. And then today, I thought at least my listening comprehension was OK. But nope, the lady at the check-in desk talked too fast for me to catch everything. *Sigh. We’ll see how this goes over the course of the summer.

Until next time!

japan!

  So! I've probably already let a lot of you know about this, but I'm going to Japan this summer!  Well, to be more accurate, my flight leaves Monday morning.  That's... less than four days away!  It's been quite the rush recently as well.  People keep asking me if I'm excited about the trip.  And honestly, I think I've been too busy to have built excitement in my mind.  Though, if I sit down to think about it, yes, I've been looking forward to this study abroad for quite some time now.

  Anyway, I proposed to keep a blog about the experience for one of the scholarships I received, and that's what took all of yesterday to create.  At first I was toying around with my own design. 

But I was never truly artistic, and halfway through, I decided it looked too amateur. That and I also thought about having to create the entire CSS for it and gave up. Instead I went around looking for templates to modify.

  Oh but before that, I wanted to try out Wordpress.com instead of blogger.  It looked more professional and I thought it would be a good feel for the blog.  Unfortunately, I didn't know about how limiting Wordpress.com is in regards to javascript and extensions.  I really like Lightbox (that image viewer that comes up when you click an image), but there just wasn't a good way of doing it at wp.com.  I spent some time searching and found a workaround, but it required an advertisement module to be placed on the sidebar.  Looked pretty ugly to me.  But I really really liked the theme I found on there.

  So, it was back to blogger, where I could use link external scripts.  Luckily I found an adapted version of the same layout and modified it a bit.  Right now, though, it has a random banner from my own picture collection, but I will be sure to update it with a pertinent image once I get to the host university (Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University) in Japan.  Since it's basically on a mountain overlooking the shore-side city of Beppu, I'm hoping I can get a nice shot of the sea and city.  Oh, here's the link to the LBAT Japan 2010 blogspot.

  My guess is most of my updates over the summer will be on that blog, but since it's associated with my university, there might be some posts here that might not be appropriate for the other blog.  No, no naughty stuff; but maybe more personal thoughts and observations.

DEE ESS ELL ARR

  Two posts in one day! Er, yeah.... Another one of my wishes from the past 3 years or so has also been granted!  Yup, finally got my shaky hands on a nice D-SLR.  At first I was going to give myself a little graduation present.  But then my dad offered to help me out with it.  And I was like.... kinda hesitant, so we settled on half.  And then after more discussing with both parents, it turned into a full on graduation present from them!  But then I felt bad, because the camera I picked out was kinda pricey.

  I picked the beastly Canon EOS 7D.  Good video features, pretty good image quality (I had to compromise a bit on this one for the video features - but I'm not pixel-perfect critical on my images anyway), and a fairly rugged body.  Those 720p videos of our Senior Design project were filmed on that baby.  And I also got some very pretty pictures of us completely trashing our apartment.  Yes, we had a little senior design lab in our living room.

  So anyway, I'm not graduating just yet.  I will after the summer.  But I got the camera early because of the Japan trip.  (I keep saying trip, but I really have to remind myself that this is a study abroad program).  But, there will be two weeks after the summer semester is over for me to trek around!  There will definitely be pictures from that.  So, I'll be vacationing in and around Kyoto and Tokyo from the 5th of July through the 17th of July.  If anyone else is gonna be in the area, we could meet up and hang out - wouldn't that be awesome?

  Speaking of vacation time ... I seem to be vacationing at the wrong time.  Everything seems to be happening after I go home.  It's quite sad.  A lot of the big summer festivals are at the beginning of August.  Something I am slightly disappointed about, it seems I went in the wrong year, because the Green Tokyo Gundam Project would've fallen into my vacation schedule... had I gone one year ago.  But to make matters eeeeeeeeven worse!  They're re-erecting this beast in Shizuoka this year. On July 24th.  A week after I go home.  I suppose it's a little out of the way of my vacation plans, but still! I'll have an unlimited rail pass...  And to top it all off, the life-sized model gods are taunting me.  This time, its a life-sized Evangelion unit.  And it opens on the 23rd of July.

  So, if I had stayed about a week longer, these would be a part of my picture collection. But unfortunately, 3 weeks is a long time for vacation.  It would've been better if the summer study program had lasted another week.  *sigh.  Oh well.  There should be some good landscape and scenic pictures though.  Hopefully I can grab some good night pics of Tokyo.