Day 1

I got to Japan today. I slept for most of the flight and then watched Iron Man 2. Narita airport was a little confusing, but not that bad. Then I met Collin and Garrett and we decided to go to Asakusa to stay at the K's Hostel here. On the way we met this cool Asian computer science grad. student named Frank who has been travelling around but doesn't know any Japanese. While we were looking on the map to get up here, a couple of Japanese people came to see what we were up to, and tried to help us figure out how to get where we were going. Amusingly, when they looked at the train map they couldn't really figure out what trains we were supposed to take, and one of them even went to ask the ticket seller. They told us to go to the wrong station (this was before Frank) and then we met Frank, who asked us how to figure out where to go and who was coincidentally going to the same place as us. So we all talked and road the train for around an hour, then figured out we were in the wrong place and had to back-track and then take another train to our actual location. Then we had to ask people how to get to where we were going, but luckily that's not too bad if you speak Japanese. Anyways Frank is great, a Stanford computer science students, and we got really lucky and got a room here (tomorrow there's not enough room for all of us and the next day they're booked up). After that long ordeal (it was already dark here) we decided to go get drunk and wander the streets here. I didn't really imagine and cannot express in words how cool it is to be able to just wander the streets and get drunk and get great food for less than 5 dollars. Anyways the 4 of us had a surprisingly great time the first day going from convenience store to convenience store buying beers and food and speaking Japanese. My camera was out of battery so I won't have any pictures until at least tomorrow, but the pictures do exist with Collin.

Also, we didn't even escape the trains until it was night time (I got in at around 3 and had to wait for Collin and Garrett until a little before $:00), but it's still fucking hot here. I'm sure tomorrow is going to take "hell on earth" to a whole new level heat-wise. But even what I assume to be our worst day here - what with our confusion on the trains and the wandering and the plane ride - was amazing and I'm really looking forward to the rest of the trip. Frank's going to be around for a few days so we'll do stuff with him. And having Garrett around is invaluable since he's been here before and c an help us navigate the transportation system.

So far, looking good!