Planes, Trains, and Automobiles!

We finally made it to Japan!! I have yet to get to my room but I'm headed there soon. But quickly before I head there, I have to say I really missed my Saturday. It's technically Sunday here already and the last time I slept was Thursday night. The flight here was fine and PTL, my ears didn't hurt. I think the guy next to me thought I was kicking a smoking habit because I went through an entire pack of gum. I was popping it like it was crack coccaine. I did take a couple of short naps on the 13+ hour flight but I tried to stay awake as much as possible because I wanted to sleep tonight Japan time. Of course what I didn't realize was that as soon as we got off the plane, we had to load up on buses for a two and a half hour bus ride through the mountains of Japan. One would think that would be pretty but it was foggy and muggy and dark. It was also fairly smelly. Let's just say the bathroom on the bus was used quite a bit. Enough said. The unfortunate news is that I get to do that bus ride both tomorrow (well technically a few hours from now) and Monday so hopefully it will smell better and I'll get to see the countryside in the daylight. From what I saw tonight, it looked a lot like West Virginia. But I'm pretty sure we're not there. For 13+ hours, it was daylight and I thought we were going to fly over the North Pole so I could wave hi to Santa for Cayton but we didn't. It is a startling thing to look at the map on the TV on the plane and see that you're over Siberia for literally five or six hours.

Once we got here to the hotel/convention center, it was quite a process to find the workspace. There is even an amusement park here! It's like a little city in itself! That's where the train came in. We had to take a little train thingy to get from the first building to the workspace. So far, here's the two things I've noticed that were cultural... the first was dinner. I'm a fairly adventuresome eater but I had to draw the line tonight. I had no idea what I was eating and at one point I literally had to spit it out into my napkin. I'm sure that was some kind of international relations faux pas but it had to be done. The other thing that I saw was the toilet. I was glad to see there was actually a toilet but it was the most hi-tech toilet I've ever seen. It had 15 or 16 buttons and somehow doubled as a shower. I don't really want to know how that works. It took me five minutes to figure out how to flush!

There is a bit of a crisis going on for me. My blackberry doesn't work here. At all. It feels like my right arm has fallen off. Actually the internet connection isn't all that great so I should probably wrap up my post. I thought we were in Japan.... the technology center of the world. My blackberry is even an International Edition. When we called Verizon they said that it does work anywhere in the world EXCEPT Japan. And Kyrgyzstan but I thought I wouldn't waste the time to correct them. So I will check my e-mail and blog as needed but I' m afraid that is not going to be as frequent as I'd like. I'm supposed to go to the press conference tomorrow with POTUS and the Japanese Prime Minister which should be interesting! At least more interesting than sitting in the file without a solid internet connection!! Hopefully I will survive without my blackberry!! Pray for me! :)