Return & misc notes

The trip back was long but fairly uneventful. The night before I left, I spent the night at my sensei’s house, like I mentioned earlier. I hate asking for favors, and was a little nervous about that, but the next morning I was really glad I did. Masako sensei showed she was thrilled I stayed by cooking me a massive, excellent breakfast of carefully sliced grapefruit, crab salad, eggs, and bacon that actually tasted like bacon, and a nut-cake kind of thing. Smile and Carol picked me up, and we managed to fit my huge bag into their car. We then went and picked up Yuko, who wanted to see me off. Then, at the station we met up with Fumi, who also wanted to see me go. And there, we ran into Takahiro, and Lina, as well. Here they all are:

They gave me some candy things to eat, on the way, and Lina gave me a post card and a live recording of Earth Wind and Fire. (rock. on.). It was a really warm send off. Gosh… sometimes you realize that certain really things are completely undeserved, but God gives them to you anyway.

Little drained in this photo

See ya Tohoku…

Got to Tokyo Eki, where I dashed to the ticket counter and ordered a ticket to Narita. The man told me a couple different times, and I picked the soonest one. The price he quoted was about half normal, but I payed without asking questions and went down to the platform. Turns out the ticket was not for the Narita Express, but some horribly slow train that makes 10 stops or so on the way to Narita. Oops. Then I got off at the wrong terminal, but the crowd was small that day so I made it to the gate in time. The flight back was nice… I watched 3 movies back to back (TNMT (good), Shreck3 (sucked), Disturbia (ok, I guess)), and watched as our plane flew through both the sunset:

and the sunrise…

Flew over grandpa’s house…

(score if you can locate it)

And even Pullman. But the thing that sucked was, I was on the wrong side of the plane to see it. It was strange to be flying from Japan to Atlanta, and be passing over my hometown in backwoods Washington on a cloudless morning. I was only about 10 miles from you, mom&dad/Paula&Josh/Marian&Jacob! Sucks I couldn’t get a photo. Still, I caught the edge of Lewiston/Clarkston:

Later, we arrived in Atlanta, and I went through security/customs without a hitch. They didn’t even open up my bags. I was curious about this. Mostly because packed in one of my suitcases was an experimental apparatus that, if I didn’t know better, would have looked suspiciously like a home-made bomb. I was really expecting to get stopped, but whatev’s not complaining.

At Atlanta, (saying “at Atlanta” sounds weird, by the way) a huge thunderstorm passed through. This delayed the plane from 7:00 to about 10:15. Got into State College at about 1:00, and my apartment at about 1:30. The guy who had my key kindly woke up and gave it to me, where I parked on the floor of my humongous and empty apartment.

I am now going through incredible withdrawl. Reverse culture shock… eh… well I kind of knew what to expect, but gosh. Americans are so direct. And huge. And unpredictable. Our roads are so wide. Our cars are so big. We have acres and acres of large mown lawns with nothing in them. Our gardens are uncreative arrangements of flowers, lacking pruned trees, logs, or rocks. There’s no bamboo anywhere. The power lines are underground. Where are the convenient stores with lots of cheap junk pastries and overly cheerful advertisements blaring over the radio? Why don’t people say “irasshaimase!” every time I enter a store?!? Don’t you want me here? Oh, I guess not. Where’s the motor scooters? Where’s the bicycles? Why do all the girls only wear T-shirts and jean shorts? And people are quite a bit larger in the US. I’m trying to figure out how this happens. Is it genetic? Is it because of all the fast food we have? The Japanese eat crappy to – students practically live on of convenient store junk. Is it the amount we eat? I don’t think I eat less than the normal American, but I’m still a stick.

Sendai was so warm. People wise, I mean. I am really missing that right now. But, I’ve got to sign off cause I’m going to the Christian grads group for the first time in a year. Hope that will cheer me up some. Give me a couple months, transitions normally suck

~ by timu on August 26, 2007.