Yookoso

What a day. I'm in Tokyo.

The flight to Japan was okay. Since I had been awake for about 24 hours by the time I boarded, I immediately fell asleep for about an hour. When I woke up, I expected to find myself well into the flight, but to my mild annoyance, we were still on the ground. The captain announced that maintenance crews needed to replace the "generator", which sounded pretty important to me, so my mood turned from "I'm irritated" to "for the love of god take your time". I'm typing right now, so they must have found a good generator to put in the plane.

During the flight, I thankfully had a smokin hot singaporean stewardess. But the JAL flight also had some nice things I hadn't seen before on a plane: on the little screen, you could actually choose from about 15 movies at any time and I watched 4: Shrek 2, The Day After Tomorrow, Hellboy, and Stand By Me. My unique dislike of the Shrek movies continues, though this one was better than the first. There was also this option to look at the "bird's eye view" camera, which shows video feed from a cameras mounted in the plane's hull and nose. It was mesmerizing. Well, actually it was pretty much just shots of clouds and water, but it was pretty cool when we went over the Aleutian islands. The luckiest thing about the flight was the seat next to me was vacant. The goofiest thing about the flight was the dude behind me. He had these HUGE round plastic frames with the thickest lenses imagineable. He looked like a cartoon character - and that's being generously kind. And I don't think he was trying to be ironic by wearing ridiculous glasses.

I arrived in Japan and immediately things got off to a poor start. My mom's cousin Tomoko passed away suddenly this morning while I was flying to Japan from food poisoning. It felt strangely and cruelly scripted that this would happen on the day I arrive for my long stay here, and it was an emotional and difficult night. At the wake, her body was lying in the open, and I had to call my mom to break the news because no one in the U.S. knew yet. And I was in the room when her 2 children - both adults - arrived for the first time. Her son charged into the room and burst out at her side yelling "Tadaima! (I'm home!)", while her daughter crept broken through the door. I hadn't cried yet, but needless to say, I started crying uncontrollably when they got there. I felt so useless standing in the room, not knowing the right things to say in Japanese, not familiar enough with Japanese and Buddhist death customs, and being the lone representative for our family in the U.S. when someone else would have filled the role better.

When I came home, I had a couple AIM conversations I really would rather not have had. Great way to call it a night.

I cried twice today. Tomorrow has to be better.

Song of the day: Radiohead / Street Spirit