I arrived fine, it was a long flight, too long. 14 hours is kind of horrendous, I don’t think it can get much longer on a single plane, I would think they would need at least one refuel to get to any other place. I got to watch 21 and Be Kind Rewind on the plane, they had this neat touch screen that let you pick from a number of different movies to watch on the flight and listen to with headphones. It was pretty pleasant and hospitable. I got to Narita around 3:30 and was on the bus to Yokohama by 4. Arrived at the Y-Cat station at around 5:30 and saw my wonderful girlfriend and was back to her apartment (where I am at the moment) around 6. A very none exciting but eventful day. I got to meet her family. They are very nice, warm, and welcome.
Then yesterday I was shown around Yokohama by Kim. She showed me Motomachi, its a long shopping street. We had tempura for lunch, to order we just took the entirely Japanese menu and pointed at random entries. She got a bowl of rice with deep fried shrimp (tempura is deep fried foods) and I ended up with some vegetarian version with seaweed, potato (which was amazingly good, like a tasty french fry slice), squash, some fish, and green beans. Then they brought me eggplant with some beans stuffed in it and that was kind of ick. We then went and saw her high school, but it was locked. It is pretty small yet fairly large. Lots of small class rooms and a number of buildings for all the grades. It looked like a fun place to go through school at. We couldn’t walk through the buildings since they gated the entire place up, but we got a good view from a small walkway that went near the campus. We then walked through Chinatown. It has a LOT of Chinese shops. I guess since Yokohama is not tourist central they don’t have a ton of shops catering to tourists. So it is pretty different from like the Chinatown in San Fransisco. We ended up going back to the apartment because it is so hot and humid here. I think its about 90 with some ridiculous humidity, I could look it up on like Yahoo but that would take effort =P. After sitting around the apartment for a bit (its a nice apartment, very spacious and welcoming) we left to go see Yokohama station. It is a giant (and I mean GIANT) set of shopping malls. A number of complexes each a number of stories tall (say around 7) each filled with all kinds of shops. Many of them are international or common shops such as Dolce or Gucci. And I am not Captain shopping, so it was not extra appealing for me. But it is fun to see the Japanese society in action. All the people traveling to and from the train. We then got to go and visit Yodobashi Camera, it is a 9 story electronics superstore. They have all kinds of things, each broken down to different floors. I could get lost in places like that sometimes. It puts Fry’s to shame. Today we are going to go to Akihabara, which is like the Tokyo electric town. It will be interesting to see what some of the things that Japan has in electronics that the U.S. doesn’t have. I looked at the cells that Japan can have and wish I could get one just to take it back to the U.S. and use with our carrier, they are nice and most aren’t geared towards just TXTers. sigh We had Italian (with a huge Japanese influence) for dinner and I got to meet one of her good friends. I got back and tried to Skype with my sister for a bit, but she had to leave for work before we could get it working. I should have set it up for her before I left. Well, back to Japan! I’ll probably add pictures either tonight or tomorrow.