Flight JL69 - The First Day

I clumsily awoke to my alarm at 3:30 am the morning of Wednesday March 22nd and was able to get ready, eat a blueberry muffin (provided by my father), and read a funny Steampunk Fairytale comic (provided by my mother) before going to the airport (with said amazing mother and father).

My first flight of the day was to LA from Las Vegas and only took an hour and had an extremely smooth landing. Once two of my friends and I arrived in LA, we found a fourth member of our study abroad group (which from hereon will be referred to as "Osaka Squad"). Apparently we had to get our luggage and then recheck it for our next flight and go through another security line. For some reason, I always have to be patted down either in my shoulder-blade-area or my ankle. Anyways, we waited at the gate (very exciting, I know) and exchange currency. The really only exciting things were A. seeing all the different airlines' stewardesses' outfits (super retro, colorful, and on point) and B. a fifth member of Osaka Squad almost missing the flight. She arrived a little before boarding time and we felt so bad for her. Thankfully it all worked out.

We took off around 2 pm on our approximately 12.5 hour plane ride. Yes, 12.5 hours. I can't sleep on airplanes. As I type this, I see the clock says 9:20 pm on Thursday March 23rd. I have had a long day with an abnormal amount of hours in it due to the peculiar amount of daylight hours. Japan Airlines had a very nice plane, with a diverse movie selection, the best airplane food I have ever had, and fascinating "Maps" tool which showed you the relative location of the airplane compared to two cities and the Day/Night areas. Basically the whole flight, our little airplane was flying from the inevitable darkness, trying to stay with the sun. I also really liked the insignia for the airlines: it's a red heron or crane silhouette within a circle

For those that care, I watched three movies I've never seen before, two of which had very similar stories and the third which was surprisingly satisfactory: 5 Centimeters per Second, La La Land, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. There were a bunch of other movies I wanted to watch, but I also read a book a friend gave me during the flight: The Alchemist. It was quite amazing and especially fitting for my flight to my long-desired study abroad. Any extra time not mentioned in books and movies was spent eating, failing to sleep, trying to sneak good pictures out the window (thank you friend!) and trying to quell the equal parts of rage and adoration a small child next to me incited.

I've always enjoyed the scenery from airplanes, even though it may not always be exciting. Our short flight was over the American southwest, so there was plenty of geological and topographical views to enjoy. However, the long flight over the Pacific was primarily composed of seeing half a blue sky and half a seemingly endless expanse of smooth, white cloud-field that went on for literally hundreds of miles. That, and interesting cloud formations, gets the mind working: stories of fantasy and sci-fi that inspire and entertain the bored traveler. Also, the ocean is pretty. (P.S. for those Inheritance Series fans I totally felt like Eragon and Sapphira in their adventurous chapter where they go over the ocean). Island-wise, there were some islands off the coast of California that were very pretty, small, and shocking. I also have a picture of a pretty mountain or volcano that I took about 10 hours into the flight. 

The whole experience felt surreal - as if nothing big was happening and I was still in the U.S. I still have that slight feeling, even after coming to our hotel and walking through a Japanese Supermarket. But, it started to hit me when we were getting ready to descend and we caught our first glimpses of Japan. It was (and is) very foggy and overcast so we didn't see anything until right before descent: but seeing the coastline and boats and city lights were so exciting! I realized "Hey. That's not America. That's Japan. Wow, that's Japan!" And then after going through customs and seeing everything in Japanese, the feeling strengthened. Thankfully the airport and these services close to the airport have a lot of English wording next to it or, if audio, after it; but that won't be the case in most places. Our hotel is also very compact and very small - it's nice just different.

 If you just want to look at pictures, type "pictures" in the search bar of the blog and it will bring up only posts with pictures in it - then ignore the text. I'm still trying to figure out if I can have a section just with all the pictures I have used.

Anyhow, I am very excited to start this adventure, though I do need sleep desperately. I have a feeling that my blog posts will continue to be longer, like this one was. Good night and good day!