Tuesday, June 16, 1998

I am in Japan. What a day.

I'll start on Monday, June 15 in San Francisco. I got to the airport at about 11am PST. We wandered and waited until our 2:40 pm takeoff. The Flight was uneventful in the important ways, but had some interesting items to report.

First, my seatmates. On the left sat Paul, a 19-year Army mechanic, on his way to Korea for his last tour. He is upset that he will miss his daughter's high school graduation next week. After some good conversation he slept for the next seven hours. On my right sat Sara, a 19 year old college student, on her way to a summer of study in Shanghai. The three of us got along well. At one point, we got quite confused. We each tried to turn on the overhead light. To our amazement, the light went on in the row in front of us. For a few minutes, we had fun teasing the people in the row in front of us. It turned out that my light was controlled by the person two rows behind me. Totally weird.

The flight was otherwise uneventful. They showed the newest James Bond movie, Good Will Hunting, and some Paul Newman movie. I only watched Good Will Hunting.

After the flight, we drove for an hour to the Akasaka Prince Hotel in Tokyo. Our bags were sent by truck and would not arrive until after 8 pm (about an hour after we arrived). A few of us decided to go out to a nearby restaurant. A Japanese employee of FMF, Maki, joined us. She was great. Maki took us to a Japanese style restaurant/bar. We were met at the door by well dressed business men. These men were quite drunk and quite funny. Anyway, we had a great shared dinner and got back to the hotel at 10:30 pm (Japan time).

Well, I will try to update more tomorrow. Thank you for reading.

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