Blogs from Tokyo, Japan, Asia - page 259

Konnichiwa! Well, it's hard to believe that we have now been living and working here in Japan for one month. It has gone by so very fast. So far, we are still really enjoying living in Japan. It is such an interesting country with interesting people! We have been getting by on the limited Japanese that we know (Thanks, Please, Hello, Goodbye), but we will start a course soon so that we can immerse ourselves in the language fully. We'll keep you posted on all that's new!... read more

We arrived at Narita Airport and easily found our way to the super expensive but super speedy train into the city. Once we arrived at Shinjuku Station where we had arranged to meet Nick, it was a slightly different story…Shinjuku Station is the busiest in the world. More people move through the station per day than people in New Zealand. Not to worry. Do what your mother always told you and stay in one place. Sarah stayed with the bags while I went on a chicken and goose chase with Nick….via coin phone, mobile and escalator. We finally got together, with a little help from the Kiwi holler. This city is madness...so many CRAZY people…very cool and very busy. So much has happened since we arrived on March 22. Storm and Nick welcomed us with open ... read more

well hey hey, arrived!! 12hours later and we made it to Tokyo! amazin, who would have believed it i would have managed to get myself this far! crazy to think but so so cool! im writing this entry on memory, ive left my actual travel diary back in the hostel, but heres hoping i do ok on that! arrived and took absolutely AGES to find our hostel, for some reason tokyo likes to number their streets in a weird code-like form and in addition half of them are in japanese....(funny that being in japan 'n all, hehe, ignorance is bliss!) but we made it, and god was it worth the wait, our first night in a private room all to myself with tv, shower, double bed, etc etc all i needed to relax myself and slip ... read more

A couple of days ago, I had a pretty rough day. It all started Wednesday night when I brought in the laundry. A couple of bees hitchhiked in on our clothes, and you know how I feel about bees. Jen and I devised a plan of attack. Swatting is not an option unless the bees land low, but they tend to stay up high beyond our reach. We decided to spray them with water to make their wings heavy so they would come down. After about 15 minutes our apartment was soaking wet and the bees were still flying high. Finally, Jen managed to capture them and set them free. She is like the Steve Irwin of bees. That fiasco consumed about 45 minutes at the end of a very long day. We got to bed ... read more

Read that subject line literally, please. We have more news of the earth shaking. Last Wednesday morning at 4:45 AM we were awakened by a magnitude 5.5 earthquake. It was extremely disorienting to come out of sleep into a world where it sounded like 4,000 tables were being dragged across a hardwood floor. Not to mention all the movement. We lost a couple of plates to gravity. The earthquake during the day was much more fun. We sent a memo to the Pacific plates asking them to confine their headbutting to daylight hours. In completely unrelated news, we recently finished the mind-bending movie trifecta of Donnie Darko, Memento, and Mulholland Drive. We had actually seen them before but it's been a while and sometimes, OK oftentimes, there's not much else to do in the Oki on ... read more