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I am currently on an airplane. More specifically I am on a 10 hour flight to Tokyo. It has already been a long day. I decided to stay awake all night because my flight was early. The first flight (to San Francisco) of my trip departed at 6:30 am. Due to a mix up in which terminal I was supposed to go to I almost missed my flight. Good news is I made the flight with a few minutes to spare. Bad news is that, I never got to say goodbye to my parents. Well six hours later I was in San Fran, which at 64 degrees was an upgrade than New York, where it was cold and raining. After going to the wrong security checkpoint twice, I finally made it to the correct departure gate. A few hours later and a successful nap later here I am. In a few hours I will be stepping off into a foreign country. I have never been outside the U.S. This was a big step in that regard. I am excited, but at the same time calm and collected.
I don’t know if this feeling is the most appropriate given that I had booked my flight a day early. Luckily I was able to find a cheap hotel online. How I am going to get there is still a toss up. The bus shuttle I believe comes close to the area the hotel is located. Maybe it was confidence that allowed me to be so calm. Confidence: in the fact that we had been well prepared to communicate in Japanese.
What brought me to my current situation, thousands of miles from home? My interest in Japanese culture began before I could remember. When I was a young child I watched a lot of cartoons. The Japanese cartoons (anime) tended to be my favorite. As I learned about Japan from history classes my interest grew. All my interests in Japan culminated in me taking elementary Japanese. The rest as they say is history.
I wonder how I will be perceived when I arrive in Japan. A few stares are at least guaranteed. I’ll figure out in a few hours. In any case I will make sure I tell how everything turned out…