Boring excitement.

It was all black. Everything! THE WALLS WERE CLOSING IN!!! THE WORLD IS EEENNDDDIIINNGGGG!!! Oh, wait, nono, it was just the dark hotel, the night before my flight to Japan, and I was sitting there on my brand new laptop plunking my feelings of mild anticipation into written word. I wrote:

To be honest, [going to Japan] hasn't hit me yet. I know a little while ago I said it had, however that was but a fleeting thought. I do not think that it will hit me until I land in Narita and realize something such as, "oh my goodness... they are all so short... and me 6'1"... I AM GODOZIRA!

Anyway, time for me to get some sleep. I do have an exciting day ahead of me. Well, its more like stressful and boring I suppose...

And a day full of stressful boringness it was. In the morning I was awoken by my parents and then endured the groggy five minute drive to the Atlanta airport. We got there four hours early and ridiculously early in the morning as all international flights "require." We had no trouble checking in, and then sat at Wendy's for an hour or so tiredly awaiting my departure through security. When I finally had to leave I hugged my parents goodbye and entered the mindlessly forward-shuffling security line. I found my gate fairly easy, and was forced to sit around for the next few hours being bored out of my mind and extremely annoyed at the “be there 4 hours early for international travel!” standard. I boarded my plane and when it lifted off I had finally departed from American soil for the first time. On this journey the only the instructions I had were, “When you arrive in Japan, exit the terminal and you’ll see an orange counter. It is the limousine bus service. Take it to Yokohama. Your tutor will meet you there.”

Stepping onto that airplane with so little information was slightly nerve wracking. I mean, I felt like I drastically lacked information, had poor Japanese skills, (My Japanese was about to the point of almost communicating “I have to pee!” after three or four tries) and basically zero experience in air travel, and during this trip I was about to fly 5000 miles landing in an Asian country for a year long exchange program. Pretty valid reason for being nervous if you ask me!

Before this international flight, I had only one experience in air travel, and It was a one hour flight from GA to NY with no transfers or layovers or anything. Ahh... memories... anyway, at the time of that flight I was sixteen, and I was dropped off at a gate, and immediately picked up right as I exited the terminal. Not a huge airport experience. Layovers? Checking the monitors for the number of my next flight? Navigating terminals? I had no idea these things even existed, let alone how to do them.

I boarded the first leg of my flight and sat down in my window seat hoping my currently absent seat mates would either be pleasant or not make the flight. That leg was only an hour and a half or so I wasn’t really that concerned, but still…

A few moments later a woman and her 10 year old daughter sat down next to me. "Oh no a kiiiidddddd…" thought a wary me, but she was well behaved, and as they were walking up I noticed that the daughter’s carry-on luggage happened to be a violin. Definitely a plus in my book. Once everyone was settled, I got to chatting with the mother, and the more we talked the more she reminded me of my early years with my mother and my cello. I guess this was mainly because they were going home from a Suzuki convention, but still. Throughout the flight the mom was perky and preoccupied with sudoku, and the daughter was well behaved and colouring, so all was well and stayed well throughout that flight. We chit chatted about music and whatnot for a few minutes, and then I succeeded in sleeping for the hour remaining before being awoken by the “we are now approaching…” speech.

It wasn’t till I awoke that I groggily found out that the flight monitors existed. This happened when I pulled out the boarding pass to the second leg of my journey to check what gate I must be at, aaand it was totally blank. What?! I thought it would just be printed on the ticket, I mean that’s how the first boarding pass worked, right? Much to my chagrin, it was totally blank! Silly untraveled me, I had no idea what to do. After a few moments of quick brainstorming I came to the conclusion that, yep, I still had no idea what to do. It was a pretty stressful moment, seeing as the first leg of my journey put me 20 minutes behind schedule and my layover in O'Hare was only 50 minutes long. But I sucked up my pride and asked my new found friend what to do. I mean, I HAD already told her that I didn‘t travel much, was going to Japan, played the cello, cry at sad movies, sit down when I pee, have murdered 5 people, flown to the moon and mars, wanted to become a famous dog trainer, never finished the 6th grade, ate live octopus, cut off my legs once so I could be crippled for fun, invented the internet, caused global warming, ate yogurt, petted a dog, licked a frozen pole, had to rip my tongue off said pole, cried a little, couldn’t taste things for days, once smacked off the high dive, didn’t like roller coasters, sporadically had super powers, could see the future, ate pie, liked pie, wanted more pie, wanted her to make me pie… etc.

Ooor, I could have just said “since we had hit it off and chatted a little.” but anyway, back to the story. I asked the lady sitting next to me for advice, and she told me “oh that’s what the monitors are for!” problem solved.

I left the airplane, checked the monitor, found my next gate, sat around boarded for a few moments, (the gate wasn't far from where we arrived) boarded the plane, and sat myself down in my comfy aisle seat, once again hoping my seat mates wouldn't be, for the lack of a better phrase, poopoo heads. Originally I had planned to study Japanese a bit on this 14 hour flight from O'Hare to Narita, but when I sat down I realized, the Asians had attacked! They were everywhere! I was embarrassed to pull out my “Genki: Elementary Japanese” book and study “Hello, I am Fred, nice to meet you.” like phrases again. So, I didn't. Instead I read the few English books I had snagged from my parents moments before leaving them, listened to the little Japanese music I had brought, and slept. Randomly I did this in a pretty solid rotation. Read for an hour or so, listened to music for half an hour or so, tried to sleep for an hour or so, and repeat. For fourteen hours. Ugh. Oh and I peed a few times. That flight was boring. ugh. Anyway, I did start and finish a relatively boring a six hundred page book flight, so thats... kind of an accomplishment?

It ended up that no one sat next to me, so I had a lot of space. Overall it was as pleasant a 14 hour flight as could be expected. Toward the end of the flight, I talked with the American across the aisle from me. He had been in Japan before, spoke fairly good Japanese, and oddly enough during the flight walked all over the place making friends with all the old Japanese people. When I spoke with him thought he had sat back down in his seat. All I remember of that conversation was that he told me, “You’ll have fun... Just do whatever is suggested and never say no to anything, ever, the whole year, even if it sounds really, really weird.” I nodded my head and tentatively decided to live my year with that logic. (Other than morally corrupt things like when I was invited to a Love Hotel ; ))

We made plans to meet up sometime because he was located in Tokyo and I was in Yokohama, but we didn’t ever follow through on them because we didn’t exchange contact information since he had already been in Japan and could go through the “Already been in Japan or Japanese citizen” line of customs. It was a lot quicker than the first timers line, so he was already gone when I got to baggage although we said we'd meet there. He wasn’t one of them hawt Asian chicks anyways, thought, so I didn’t really think much of losing contact so quickly.

Like I said, it took me a while to get through the first timers' customs and being untraveled like I was, I accidentally went to the one carousel that had people gathered around it. I stood there for a good 10-20 minutes wondering how I could ensure that this was the right place, but since it was the only one with bags or people in the whole airport, I just stood there. Everyone was Asian, who was I supposed to ask? I didn’t know if anyone even spoke English! When my bags still hadn't come, and I spied two white people with bags who were talking in English walk by, I asked for help. They told me about the monitor’s (yet again) which I hadn’t noticed. I thanked them and found the right place for me (which had no bags on it even when I first got there) I wandered around it mentally scratching my head in “wtf”ness and then turned the last corner and saw my bags sitting on the floor in a line of apparently unclaimed bags. Apparently by the time I left customs my flight’s bags had already been completely collected and the 7-8 that were left were just pulled off the carousel and placed on the ground. I thought this was rather odd because I walked pretty briskly to customs when I got off the flight, and didn't have that much trouble in customs, so I can only guess that everyone on my flight was already from Japan and flew through customs and got their bags before I made it though noobie-firstimers' customs. Meh, who knows.

Anyway, I grab my bags and went through the mandatory “are you bringing drugs/alcohol through here” blahblah and exit the terminal with just the 3 lines of instructions I had been emailed nervously running over and over again in my head. Luckily, although they were much more concise than I would have liked, they were perfect. I exited the terminal, and a big bright orange counter was right in front of me. I bought a ticket (in English since I was too scared to try Japanese) and went out to the bus stop (which was right outside) and waited for my bus to Yokohama.

Even though the majority of people in the airport and on the plane were Asian, it hadn’t truly hit me that I was in an Asian country until I stepped onto that bus and for the first time ever I noticed and truly felt that I was the minority. The only language I heard was Japanese, every seat but one was taken by a Japanese person, everyone was wearing Japanese clothes, people were using Japanese cell phones and reading Japanese books... sufficient to say, it was an odd feeling being a white male and being the only minority on that bus. I sat down next to a Japanese business man in the only empty seat left, and 20 minutes later remembered that I had forgotten to say “座ってもういいですか。” (May I sit here?) which is the polite, and culturally expected thing to do. "Oh well," I thought, "I’d have been too nervous to say it out loud anyway."

I dozed off and on for the two hours that the bus trip took and then arrived at YCAT (Yokohama) terminal. When I stepped off the bus, three hours later than planned because of delays, my tutor was standing there bored but still holding a piece of paper in hand saying “Fred Nicodemus.”

He picked up the heaviest of my bags, waved goodbye to his tutor friends, and after briefly greeting me, we shuffled off toward Yokohama's taxi stop. He had planned on taking the subway to Minesawa-kamicho, but it was late, we were both tired, and I had heavy bags to carry. All I remember about the conversation we had that first night was that I attempted to talk in Japanese, and failed, and he attempted to talk in English, and failed. I do remember him trying to remember the English word for "Major" and i said "senmonwa?" and he was all happy... but the littlest Japanese from a white person makes Japanese people happy, so meh. Anyway, this first taxi ride in japan was kind of weird because Yokohama is full of small one-way looking roads that go both ways, lots of lights, an looots of people. Before this trip, I hadn’t been in even a mid-size city before, and Yokohama is the second biggest city in Japan.

The ride was a mishmash of poor communication in two different languages, tired feelings, bright lights, excitement, and exhausted enjoyment. We arrived at Minesawa dormitories at around 7 at night, briefly talked to the office ladies briefly, signed a few papers, and then went to my room, B-122. He then showed me, more with body language since at that point we knew we couldn't communicate with language, that he had bought me a few gifts. Toilet paper, tissues, a Japanese sized towel, a sheet, and a pillow. I thanked him, we had a few awkward bad-language inspired moments of silence and then he left saying he’d meet me tomorrow. I remember sitting on my bed a few moments, wondering if I should go out and explore, or just pass out. I was exhausted and scared of exploring alone because I didn’t speak Japanese well, so I decided even though it was only 7:30 at night, I would go to bed. I drifted off to sleep my first night in discomfort because of my horrible bed but wondering japan wondering what the people in the program would be like, happy that I wasn't sitting any longer, and a lingering excitement in the knowledge that I was in a different country.

Thus I ended my trip, and first moments in Japan on a hard, springy, horrible bed, with a rather hard and annoyingly uncomfortable pillow, three unpacked bags, and one life-changingly exciting year ahead of me.

But seriously, that bed sucked REALLY bad before I got the futon.

-Fricodemous (I really do have trouble remembering how two names are supposed to go together ; ) )