The Land of the Rising Sun

Greetings from Japan! I've survived my first day in Japan and I'm pretty much already on local time. It helps when you don't actually have time to sleep. It works to your advantage sometimes. I now know why they call this country the Land of the Rising Sun. That's because the sun comes up at 4a!!! Through the drawn curtains! They didn't lie when they came up with that nickname!!! I am sooooo glad I took the eye mask off the plane with me!!

Today I basically spent at the Windsor Hotel for the Japanese-US press conference. Let's just say I excel at hurrying up and waiting. We did a lot of that today and included in that was a 2 hour bus ride up the mountain so we could just wait some more. They are serious about security too. I can't tell you how many times they've checked my ID badge and most of the time we were no where actually close to POTUS. When we got to the hotel, we literally walked through the bowels of the hotel for about 25 minutes, through a couple of different kitchens, the floral shop, the dumpster area- you name it and we saw it. All of that to get us to a tent to wait to walk all the way back to go to the presser. The presser itself was rather small. I was several feet away from POTUS and we knew ahead of time that he would only call on two people. We generally can predict who they will be and I can always be assured that it's not going to be me. Usually I have a question to ask just in case. This time I was blackberry-less and not all that connected to the real world and couldn't come up with a just-in-case-question. And with my luck, I was worrying that he would call on me today of all days!! But thankfully that didn't happen!!

As you'll remember, I had special attention from the Secret Service when I was in the Mideast in January. The agents said they were on "Becky Duty". So word must get around because there are entirely different agents on this trip and the agent who was handing out pool passes (not to the swimming pool) today said, "I guess I'm on Becky duty and I'm your personal agent." I nearly fell on the floor because I asked him if he knew the other guys from January and he said no!! The two agents with us today were totally awesome and made a long, boring, hot, day fairly fun!

We had to take a bus up the mountain but the way down the mountain was definitely the highlight of the day!! We went down on a gondola ride. I admit it. When they said we were going on the gondolas, I thought we were going to be in those little boats in the canals of Venice with guys rowing and singing to us. I guess I was having a blonde moment but it took me a long time to figure out that they were referring to the ski lift contraption going STRAIGHT down the mountain! My personal agents insisted on riding with me to keep me safe! Actually they were a bit scared for the first drop of the ride. It was incredible!!! Unfortunately it was also very very foggy and muggy so I didn't see anything. Apparently there was a lake that formed from a volcano and the top of the volcano is an island in the lake. I'll take their word for it because all I saw was clouds!!

Unfortunately, I left my camera cable at home so you'll have to wait until the trip is over to see my pictures of the clouds!!