みんなさん、こんにちわ！

Hello, everyone! Welcome to my travel blog! Some of my friends have been blogging their experiences abroad, so I decided I would hop on the bandwagon and start a blog of my own. As you probably already know, I’m going to be spending the next two months in Japan for a work assignment. The purpose of this blog is to chronicle my journey and keep all of you guys updated with me in the land of the rising sun.

A quick background: most of you also already know that I work as a software engineer for Boeing on an Apache helicopter training simulator for Japan. When we started hardware integration, we had the trainer on our site in Hazelwood, MO. However, we have since shipped the trainer to our customer in Utsunomiya, Japan. So now it is necessary for some of us to travel to Japan in order to test out our software on the real trainer.

Since I started this job (in June 2006 – I can’t believe it’s been so long!), I was enthusiastic about the possibility of doing a short-term relocation in Japan. In fact, I took two Japanese language classes at Wash U last year just in case I would get the opportunity to go. Sally and I hoped we would both get to go live in Japan together for some time, as our previously linked friends did for their excursions abroad. However, last May we got an adorable puppy, Foxy, whom we just couldn’t bring ourselves to leave behind with someone else, so I decided to only go for two months and Sally would stay in St. Louis, visiting me for a week in the middle of the assignment.

It’s going to be difficult and I’m going to miss both Sally and Foxy terribly while I’m gone, as I’m sure they will miss me. But every opportunity worth taking has its sacrifices and I’m trying to keep a positive attitude about the adventure I will be having over the next two months. It’s going to be a lot of work and a lot of adjustment, but I hope that in the end it will have been worth the cost.

I am currently typing this entry on the plane, without access to the internet, so I probably won’t get a chance to post this until sometime late tonight (read: in the morning for my readers in the States and afternoon for those in Europe) until I get a chance to put it online. So far the voyage across the pond has been a very nice one. This is the first time I have ever traveled business class and if you will allow me to quote the good Mr. Bueller, if you ever have the means, I highly recommend it.

The flight from St. Louis to Dallas-Fort Worth airport was on your typical regional jet (I think it was an MD-80). The first class seats were very nice and spacious, especially for one of these planes which are very small and are usually more packed in than the bigger transcontinental jets. The flight left at 7:00 AM CST which meant I had to be at the airport at 5 AM which was teh sux0rz (in the parlance of our times).

The highlight of the flight was actually during take-off. When I’m taking off from or landing in St. Louis and I can see out of the window, I always try to identify as many landmarks as I can, and see if I can keep the highways straight. I did the best job of this than I ever have this time, and was actually able to identify my friend Katie Curry’s house. More proud of myself I have rarely been.

The other thing of note on this flight which was not remotely as cool: we normally would have had beverages served but there was a medical emergency and they had to keep the aisle clear. When we landed they let some paramedics on the flight to take someone out on a stretcher before any of us could get up. It was hard to be annoyed by all of that since I’m sure nobody was more put out than that guy was. I never found out what medical problem he was having, specifically.

So we landed in DFW (which is one of the nicest airports I’ve ever been to. It’s very clean and new looking and it’s got tons of shops) and made our way to the Admiral’s Club. Fancy! It’s basically just a big nice lounge area with complimentary food and drinks and places to plug in your laptop and get on the internet. I think it comes with the business class tickets on AA. More than anything, it was just cool to feel like a VIP. We also printed out some important export documentation I needed, but that’s boring.

We did that for about three hours until it was time to board for our flight to Tokyo. This time I got to experience what business class was like on a Boeing 777. Let me tell you – it’s nice! The seats are huge with lots of leg room and fancy trays that fold out of the armrest and the seat in front of you and interlock to make a huge tray. They give you these super high quality Bose powered isolated headphones that keep the airplane noise out very well – I’ve been wearing mine almost the whole time since we boarded. The food is also obviously higher quality (I had the cheese tortellini in a pesto sauce).

Not only are the seats huge, but there’s an electronic control to make the seat move into just about any position you can think of – including laying flat at about a 10 degree angle. I had put my carry-on with the laptop in the space behind the seat in front of me so I didn’t quite have enough room to pull that off, but I came close enough to get pretty comfortable while I was watching TV. Oh yeah, let me tell you about that.

There’s a television in the seat in front of you where you can watch movies, TV shows, play games, etc. I watched Michael Clayton (which was pretty good – takes a while to pick up but once it does it’s quite suspenseful. And George Clooney does a great performance as expected). I also watched some 30 Rock and Ugly Betty – two shows that I had been meaning to check out but never had a chance. They were both okay and I laughed out loud a few times but they weren’t amazing or anything. I guess Arrested Development has just raised my standards so much that it’s hard to be wowed by a sitcom anymore. I can’t even hardly watch shows that have a laugh track anymore, for example.

They also have games you can play on that TV so I played some Tetris and Sudoku while I listened to my iPod. I also solved the Monday New York Times crossword in like five minutes (the only time I wished the flight was on Sunday as planned…) That and I whipped out my Japanese textbook from last year in an attempt to brush up. I’m pretty rusty right now but I have a feeling that hearing the language all the time will get those synapses firing again and most of what I’ve already learned will come back.

Anyway, that’s just about all that’s happened so far. By the time I get a chance to post this, I will have landed in Tokyo, taken the bus up to Utsunomiya, and checked into my hotel so there will be more to write, I’m sure. Sorry if this has been rambling, but this tends to be my writing style for journals. Maybe in future editions I will put a summary paragraph up at top for you busy people who don’t have the time to read my novel of a post. Or maybe you guys can just suck it up :-)

じゃあまた、

Until next time,

デカード