First Day on the Job

Sorry this is so late in coming, everyone. I've been here in Nippon for about three days and have seen and done a ton of things. Unfortunately, internet connections are sparse at the Amity annex where I'm staying, so I have to do most of my surfing at a local Seattle's Best coffee shop (at least it's not Starbucks, I guess).

Dad and Kyna, two of my favorite people, were nice enough to see me off Thursday night with a tearful goodbye. After a three hour flight I spent the night in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, which wasn't as bad as it sounds. One thing I learned that night, though - monorails still operate at 2 a.m., and they're really spooky when no one's around... I spent a few hours in L.A. LAX airport the next morning, and left around 11 a.m. PST for what was about a 12-hour flight over the Atlantic.

A few words about Japanese airplanes. First, the entertainment is great. At any one time you're given a list of at least 30 second-run movies to watch whenever you want, that start and stop at your command. To compare, a flight to Europe typically gives you about 10 movies, all of which start and stop at predesignated show times. This means that I got to watch The Dark Knight twice on the flight. That was a very, very good thing. There were also a few simple games available -- Bejeweled, a Galaga knock-off, those kind of things.

Second, the in-flight meals were beautiful. The trays were lime green plastic, desserts (four pieces of cantaloupe) were neatly arranged in a plastic bowl, and I can now say I used chop sticks in mid-air. That still didn't stop them from serving me some sort of microwaved Italian dish, but so it goes.

Finally, I learned that getting a gig as a Japanese airline stewardess is ridiculously competitive. It typically requires that the stewardess has an inside connection and is under the age of 26 (they're usually fired after then). The result is a troupe of identical, mannequin-quality stewardesses. Cool.

Anyway, I landed in Osaka and promptly began to drink things from the airport vending machines.

First was a Kirin soft drink, which looked vaguely like some kind of tea-water. It was not tea water. It was cold-coffee water, and was God-aweful. It was, therefore, immediately chased down with this:



Sounds nasty, yeah? Well, it's not. It's actually a very refreshing, Gatorade-esque drink (hence "sweat," sort of like Gatorade is meant to replenish ... get it?), and since it kept me from barfing up that coffee drink, I'll always have a special relationship with this blue guy.

Then, after an hour-long train ride, we made our way to the annex.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
It's 9:06 three days later, and I've gotta run to my first day of work. I'll be back to update the rest of everything tonight. Stay tuned...