Night of the Living Dead

I have been awake now for...umm, close to 24 hours. My lovely plan to stay awake throughout the whole flight here so that my jet lag wouldn't be too bad has a major flaw- my body thinks it's 8:00am right now, though my clock says it's 11:00 pm.

So, kids, here's the deal for today. We had a looong flight...about 11 hours. It was nice that there were so many teachers on the flight (there were 100 from my group) because the people on the plane let us walk around to stretch and congregate, something they don't usually do. Being a teacher has it's advantages; you're perceived as a not-so-big-threat-to-security. Our flight was running a little late. We got to Narita airport at about 5:45, went through customs (I got a really cool sticker in my passport- I'll be happy to show you when I get back), and got on a bus. It took about 1 1/2 hours on the bus to get to our hotel in Tokyo. We got our rooms, ran up to drop off our things, and then went to meet some volunteers who took us out to nearby local restaurants for dinner. They fed us 2 meals and a snack on the plane, but I was delighted to eat Japanese food in Tokyo!

Sumi, a university student who is a junior studying math/education, took 3 of us to a lovely little place where we ordered four different small plates and all shared [actually, she ordered for us, as our Japanese is pretty darn bad]. The food was good, and very different. The last thing we ate (which was also my favorite) had rice, some tuna, and a raw egg on top that was mixed all together. I wasn't sure about it when I saw that raw egg, but it was really good! Oisaii! (yummy!)

For now, I am going to get ready for bed. Sayonara!