Live from Yachiyo

Hello folks! I'm sitting in my friend's apartment here in the Kayada neighborhood of Yachiyo. He's still at work and I just got back from walking about 3 miles for the heck of it. The scenery didn't change much, but I did find a couple cheap-looking places to grab some yakitori, ramen, and udon later when he gets in. This is definitely a suburban place... nothing interesting unless you like LOTS of houses. I'm mainly sparing everyone the big introductory post, or at least the major details, as I've e-mailed everyone already like crazy pretty much. Anyone who doesn't know though, here's a few things:

My trip here was extremely long and began with a 6.5 hour ride with Aaron from Baton Rouge to Houston. We were up kinda late at his grandma's house and ate at Applebee's before sleeping for a few hours and getting up at 4am to get to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in time. I had to fly from Houston to save a ton of money since flights have sky-rocketed in Baton Rouge and New Orleans since the hurricane. Anywho, the airport in Houston was eeeeeaaasy, even though it's freakin' massive. I just push a few buttons on a touch screen, hand over my bags, toss my backpack and shoes on a conveyer, and wa-la... done. I get a biscuit at McDonald's and get on the plane. It takes off, and into Detroit in just over 2 hours. Now the fun shall begin....

Welcome to Detroit, I say! The airport there is like the Great Wall of China in that it's long beyond imagination. I've never seen such a long hallway in my life. There's a freakin' monorail indoors there to get you across it from gate 1 to like gate 100 or whatever... and this is just one terminal for THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND DECENT! Hehe, anyway, I get something to drink, walk around a bit to stretch the legs and onto the next plane I go. I had noticed also that there was like a Japanese part of the place where the announcements were in the language as well as the signs, so that's where my flight was of course. I'm sitting there watching the Chinese tourists cram as many bags of crap as they can get on that plane in the compartments. One Chinese lady was yelling out Mandarin at me for 5 minutes before I calculated that she wanted to sit by her kids and needed me to switch seats, so I did. We get taxied out to the runway and the pilot comes on and says the engine's eff'd up, and we gotta go back for a few minutes to check something. TWO hours later, we're sweating our brains out on the plane and they say it's not going to Tokyo or Shanghai, so we go stand in the airport again. There just HAPPENED to be a spare 747 just hangin' out there for some reason, so 3 hours after that, we got to board again, with the Chinese complaining they will NOT stay the night in Japan, but giving up eventually since it's free and they can shut up about the World War II crap for a night. So I was delayed 5 hours, fun stuff. My legs were hurting like heck when I got ON the flight, nevermind how they felt later. I took some Ibuprofen about 4 or 5 hours into the flight though and that helped. I had cool people sitting by me though, a Japanese dude about my age and a guy from California on his way to Bangkok. I had a US Soldier behind me that I chatted with during the delay and he's got my e-mail address. That stuff made the 12.5 hour flight more bearable. Anyway, I got to Tokyo 7 hours after Mark got back here and he was still waiting for me at the airport, freakin' AWESOME! We took the trains home and yeah, here we are. That was a long day and I've had a couple days to recuperate. We've done some neato stuffs and I have a few pics. I'd like to show them, but I'm waiting on a reply from Aaron to see if he's going to have me some hosting space, and if not, I've got a place to use, I just gotta see what he's got first.

The pictures I do have are some random ones from the streets in Yachiyo. They're just pics of houses and a few neato buildings really. The terrain here is pretty too. Right now, I'm listening to System of a Down's new CD set, drinking some cold green tea I got at a vending machine on the way back here, and snacking on some peanut M&Ms that I'll miss once I'm done with them, since I haven't seen them here yet. I just walked about 3 miles, checking out the blocks and blocks and blocks of houses and houses... I will say that something interesting here is that people act like you're just another Japanese, even though I'm obviously a W.A.S.P. Hehe.. at least they know about the "W" in that acronym, but still... They talk to you in Japanese the same way they talk to each other, and don't stare at all. I kinda figured it'd be a bit different, but they act like there's nothing out of place at all. It's kind of annoying sometimes because I may not know what in the blue %#&% they're talking about, but a sales clerk is going to explain the usage of some random item to me anyway though I just want to complete the transaction and get the heck outta there. You probably can't buy a toothbrush here without them making a brushing motion with it over their mouth and explaining it. I'm just kidding there, just sayin' I've had them kinda go on about something and I'm just like, "hai, wakarimashita, arigatou gozaimashita," or "yeah, I getcha, thanks a lot." I'm of course thinking "urusei" or "shut up." LOL, but they're just being nice, so that's actually a good thing compared to a bastard clerk back home. This area may lack massively in neato things to do, but I will say it is very pretty. The houses are great, I want one. They're VERY nice, yet not very big. They just look comfy. Everything is new here because Mark says they just started building here, as it was recently very rural. The contrast is sometimes visible, as in my pictures, where you've got a cool house with olde skool Chinese architecture and a nice little field of vegetables surrounded by interesting-looking trees... and then BAM, a skyscraper or something. It also seems they don't have the concept of zoning here, so things are kinda mixed up. I of course HAD to get a pic of a string of vending machines right before bagging some green tea from one.

Tomorrow, I might go to the town of Narita and/or maybe the city of Chiba just to walk around some more and take in whatever sights I can while Mark works. I *MIGHT* go to Akihabara myself and look at laptops or something, or else wait because he plans on taking some girl out to a park next to Tokyo Stadium, so we could go then, but I think the electronics places in Akihabara aren't so lively then. I want to check out Makuhari as my aunt Satomi recommended, but it's a pain in the rear end from here, even though as the crow flies, I'm not that far. I'll wait 'till I move and then just take one of the JR lines there instead of changing trains like 3 or 4 times from this silly place. It'd be more fun to go there with someone anyway, walking around alone is kinda boring right now. Monday, I get to move into West Tokyo, YAY!!!!! That place looks much more lively to me, plus it's not too hard to get places from it. I'll be near Nishi Kokubunji-eki(station), which is supposed to have a huge mall on it with 9 floors, and then there's Tachikawa station a stop away. I'll be passing through Ogikubo and Shinjuku a lot, so that's got LOTS of stuff to do and see. I may have already posted all of this.... Anyway, I'm getting long-winded, 'cause I hadn't posted since a while before I even left, so yeah. I'll be working on getting those pics up on here within the next day or so, so just sit tight for a liiiitle bit longer. It's 6pm on the 6th here, so that means it's like 3am on the 6th back home... Well, I'm out. 'Till next time, Jaa ne!