(This was written while on the plane from Tokyo to Fukuoka)
The flight from SFO to Narita is remarkably pleasant, and goes quite quickly. ANA is a pleasant airline, save for the fact that food is somewhat scarce. Pack sandwiches next time.
Narita airport is not, in fact, in Tokyo, but in BFE about 60 kilometers from Tokyo. Traffic getting from Narita to Haneda is manageable but I'm glad my flight was about 40 minutes early.
On the way in to Tokyo, we passed a truck carrying swine. Now, I've seen many such trucks before, but never while heading in to a major metropolitan area. I suppose they must like their food very fresh. (Think Restaurant at the End of the Universe fresh...)
Speaking of which, Tokyo isn't at all like I imagined it - somehow I expected an enormous number of very densely packed skyscrapers. The overall urbanization density here seems somewhat lower than that of Tel Aviv; it's just big, stretching out all over the place.
For no apparent reason, I've been placed in business class on the flight to Fukuoka. I'm not complaining but I have no idea why this happened or how. (The fact that I don't speak Japanese may have contributed to this latter phenomenon)
And speaking of which, I've started to study Japanese, on the theory that I've got about 15 hours of travel, how hard a language could it be? [/sarcasm] As of now I can construct simple sentences, the most useful of which so far is:
Watashi wa nihongo o naraimasu kara kyo no asa. Anata wa eigo o hanaserimasu ka?
(Which means either "I've been studying Japanese since approximately this morning. Any chance you speak English?" or "My aardvark is very ill, do you have any eligible daughters?" I'm not quite sure, which means I probably need to work harder on the language.)
zunger: ←Random quote for the day 