Day one...planes, planes, and more planes

Well, thanks to the Big Man I am safe and sound at Dave's house (missionary guy here). I almost didn't get here, but more on that later. The day started off on about 2 1/2 hours of sleep before spending 3 1/2 hours at the Minneapolis airport waiting for my flight (I caught a ride from a guy that works there and he started work at 4:30 am).

So anyways, I hop on the flight to Chicago...uneventful, which is nice. Got to O'Hare and found my next flight. Since this flight was with a Japanese airline, there were mostly Japanese people there. I sat and watched them interact and forgot how much fun it was to watch their manurisms :) if you have never watched Japanese people before, there is LOTS of bowing...and I mean lots. The best is when they are talking on the phone and still bow just out of habit! It makes me smile :)

So finally the time comes for our massive 777 to take off and I'm sitting next to this super cute 2 year old girl, with her mom on the other side. I thought to myself that this could get torturous if she suddenly gets crabby...after all, a 13 hour flight is not something God designed 2 year olds to do! Long story short, this girl was the best behaved kid I have EVER seen, and that's no exaggeration! She didn't cry or get ornery a single time, and actually spent over half the flight sleeping on her mom's lap. The rest of the time her and I filled with games of peek-a-boo and who could make the funniest face. I may or may not have considered kidnapping her and taking her home with me...haha just kidding...but seriously :)

Well, we landed at Narita in Tokyo and I go through immigration and customs with only a minor hangup (apparently when I write a Tokyo address and my bag has a tag for Sendai it raises red flags). I changed my money over to yen and made my way to my last flight. Now, remember how I said I almost didn't make it?

They announce over the speaker that the flight will depart on time, but there was a good chance that the plane would have to turn around and come back due to a snow storm in Sendai. Instantly I started planning out in my head what I would do if that happened, and let's just say that mixed with being up for about 24 hours wasn't too fun. Regardless, we got on our little puddle jumper plane and off we went...actually I have to mention that our taxi to the runway was so long that I fit in TWO naps...if I hadnt been the only one who spoke English on the plane I would have blurted out "are we drivin to sendai now or what?!" anyways...that's what happens when I am tired. So we finally decided to fly there and I passed out before we even reached our altitude. I woke up on the decent and come to find out we must have had to hang out in the air for a bit while they plowed the runway. Even still, I can't believe the plane didn't swerve out of control when we hit the runway...it was a slushy snowy mess. But we made it so I'm happy.

I then met Dave and he drove us to his house where he got a hot bath going for me...best part of the day by far! So here I am...it's a little after 10pm friday night here...for you folks back home it is 7am Friday morning. So to you, ohayou (good morning...probably spelled wrong)!

I will hopefully throw another post up tomorrow night.