Akamon House

So far everything has been painless. On the flight to Seattle an older gentleman and I had a conversation about his kids and the difficulties of late teenhood and the early 20's. I arrived in Seattle with an excess amount of time, so the transition was laid back and unrushed. A combination of sleeping and watching movies made the flight to Tokyo very manageable. I was worried about customs since I entered on a tourist visa and the things that I've read said that in the case of changing visa types the applicant would have to leave the country and return with the new visa. Fortunately I just told the customs official that the school was taking care of the visa and she just waved me though with a comment making sure that I understood that I would have to take care of the Visa changing in a timely fashion.

Once I was officially though customs I faced my first real challenge. I had to locate the Sky Liner train and purchase a ticket. There weren't any signs, so I wandered around until I found their booth. I then proceeded to stand dumbly in front of the booth trying to make sure I had actually found the right place. I needed to make sure that the train went to Nippori station. Once I found evidence that I was most likely doing the right thing, I got in line. The cashier spoke very good English, so there was no difficulty obtaining the ticket(kippu) at that point. The ticket cost me 2,400 Yen which equates to about $33. The Sky liner has reserved seating like many planes, do and once I figured that out I found my seat at gave Mr. Mieno a call (My landlord). He had asked me to call so that he could meet me once I reached Otsuka Station. Nippori to Otsuka cost 150 Yen which was much more reasonable.

Mr. Mieno met me with a sign with my name on it and insisted on carrying my 46.5lb bag to his car and then up a very steep flight of stairs once we got to the Akamon house. My room is small, but once I put everything away in the storage spaces the room opened up and is looking promising. The place needs some cleaning which I'll get to tomorrow and I'll post pictures tomorrow as well.

I'm exausted, so I'm going to get some sleep and hopefully I'll avoid the jet lag since it's 9:00pm.