The Adventure Begins

After a very long flight and what seemed like an even longer wait in the immigration line at the airport, I am finally in Japan. My flight was a little late because we had a head wind the whole way from Dallas to Tokyo. Then the line to get through immigration processing was backed all of the way out of the immigration area, so my Program Administrator, Noko Fukuchi had a long wait in the arrivals area just outside of customs. We were both very happy to see each other. Noko drives a very small Nissan. It is smaller than any model of Nissan that we have in the U.S. We had a bit of a challenge deciding how to put my two pieces of luggage into it. Also, it was my first time to ride in a car with the steering wheel on the right hand side and they drive on what we Americans would call the wrong side of the road. It felt a little strange to be sitting where I would expect the steering wheel to be and be the passenger.

Tokyo Narita Airport is on the north side of Tokyo. I was surprised as my plane came in to land how much agricultural land is right around the airport. When I mentioned it to Noko she said that it is a peanut, leafy vegetable and carrot growing area and that when the proposal came out to build the airport there was resistance from the farm community because of the valuable farmland that would be taken out of production. We passed through Tokyo and by several areas that Noko pointed out as being new developments built on land that was reclaimed from the sea. I am spending the next two nights in Yokohama which is on the south side of Tokyo and is Japan’s second largest city. Basically today was spent just getting here, so there weren’t many photo opportunities but I thought I would share a picture of my view from my small, but nice hotel room.

I will post lots more tomorrow after I have a chance to get some sleep. Thanks for reading!