Welcome to Japan!

After 24 hours of travel I finally made it.  The flight from SFO to Narita was 10 hours, and we even arrived half an hour earlier than scheduled.  No problems with customs or immigration, everything went smoothly.  We even got fed on the plane which was nice.  And the food was actually GOOD.  It's been so long since I've had edible plane fare.  They played some movies which were... meh.  Some random one with Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins (Fracture?), In the Land of Women and Blades of Glory.  Just a way to pass the time.  Minimal turbulence (they seemed to turn the seatbelt sign on at the slightest tremor), no screaming children or babies.  Actually there were lots of ojiisans (grandpas) on the flight, or at least in my section of the cabin.  I lucked out on this trip: on both flights had an empty seat next to me, and an aisle so I could stretch my legs, and on the SFO-NRT flight was in front of the emergency exit so I didn't have to worry about squishing anyone sitting behind me. 

If I had thought Nova didn't really have their act together before arrival, there was no doubts now.  I got off the flight, waited a ridiculous long time for my bags to come off (probably because they were the first on), and went out into arrival hall and expected to see a big Nova sign and someone to meet me but no.  I wandered around, almost plowing over a few people with my cart, and then decided to ask the girl at the information counter.  So she took my name and paged for my party.  Then Jenna, who was on my flight from SFO, found me and we wandered around looking lost together.  About half an hour later, we paged again and found Justin, the other guy on our flight and the three of us crowded the lobby together.  Finally, Jenna and I went to get some change and make a call to the office to see what was up.  After several futile attempts at dialing the number on a Japanese public telephone, this American lady helped us.  So finally we got through to the office and they said the guy meeting us would be there in 10 minutes and told us to wait near the baggage delivery service.  John, an aussie who works in the personnel department, showed up and we sent our 2 suitcases off, an hour and a half after landing.  Then we trekked to another terminal, carry ons in tow, to meet more people.  Long story short, we dicked around Narita airport for 4 hours in total, waiting to collect 3 more people arriving from all over the place.

We finally got going around 6pm (we landed at 1:40pm) and took the train to Ueno station in the northern part of Tokyo which took an hour.  2 of the people with got sent off on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Sendai in the northern part of the island, while the 3 of us left got on the subway to go to our final destinations.  After about 30 minutes on the subway I reached Abiko station and met my roommate(s) Hannah and Jen and Jen's boyfriend Tom.  Jen and Tom are moving out on Monday since their year is up so she's not "really" a roommate of mine, I guess.  She's really nice though, I'm going to inherit a bunch of stuff from her when she goes.  She's from New York but is going to travel around China for a couple weeks before going back to the States.  Hannah is from Wales and has been here 6 months but is terminating her contract early since she doesn't like the job.  Honestly, she didn't really endear me when she wasn't where she was supposed to meet me when I got off the train at Abiko station and was really dumping on the job.  I know the rep Nova has isn't great, but you're on the bottom of the bottom rung in a huge national corporation so of course you're going to get treated like crap.  I won't let her negativity get to me though.  I haven't even started work yet!  She's been pretty nice though.  They invited me out to the izakaya (bar/restuarant) last night but I was too tired and sweaty to go anywhere.  And since I had thought that my luggage would arrive at home the same day I did, I didn't have any other clothes in my carry on.  All I wanted to do was shower, get some instant noodles and go sleep. 

So the three of them went out and I popped down to the 7-11 on the first floor (score!) and got something to eat and then shower and tried to pass out.  We've got wireless hook up here (which is so strong any better than the crap connection I had in Vancouver) so I sent out an email letting people know I was alive and tried to sleep.  I barely ate any of my noodles since my stomach was in knots and was sweating buckets from the heat and humidity.  I was used to the heat in Singapore but I've been totally declimatized since I moved away 6 years ago.  It'll take a while to get used to it.  It's not bad but when you're already feeling crappy it makes sleeping kind of hard.  I tossed and turned for a few hours and finally got my stomach to settle around 1am and finally fell asleep.  I woke up around 5am (and consequently rolled over and went back to sleep), and then again at 9am and got up.  Read through this mountain of paperwork Nova gave me about starting work and getting settled until my luggage arrived at 11am. 

So, that was a pretty mundane and boring update I'm sure.  I've more or less gotten unpacked and settled.  I ventured out for a walk around the neighbourhood in search of a plug adapter for my computer and ended up finding this wicked electronic store called KS (like Future Shop) and got a cord but the end that plugs into the AC adapter is different.  But Jen gave me hers (I think she gave it to me anyway) so I can at least get my computer charged up.  Andrew wants to meet up tonight, maybe go to Shinjuku or Shibuya and hang out but I don't know if I'm ready for that adventure yet.  I don't have a phone yet so I have no way of contacting him if I get lost.  Well, payphones I guess.  I'm going to make him meet me tomorrow and he can help me get a phone and bank account set up after Hannah takes me to City Hall to apply for my gaijin (foreigner) card in the morning.