Arriving in Japan

We flew from SFO to LAX at 9:25am. Our flight was delayed in LAX, but we made up for the time in the air and arrived on time in Narita. The airport bathrooms are very nice. The bathroom doors go all the way to the floor so you can't see anyone's feet and in the ladies bathroom, there's even a spot to place your baby in a baby seat against the wall of the stall. Pretty interesting! The sinks were all automatic and there are no paper towels, but there's a dynamic hand blower. I think it blows harder than a leaf blower! My hands were dry in seconds. The luggage claim was super easy. There was an airport worker that would grab everyone's luggage and line it up nicely for people to take. We passed through immigration and customs fine. Then we bought tickets on the limousine bus (comfortable charter bus) to Kashiwa station. It's an extremely prompt and organized bus system here. The bus picked us up at 5:35pm and it took almost 2 hours to arrive at Kashiwa station mainly because the bus was through small roads and only going about 40 km/hr. I'm thinking they don't have many freeways to take fast shortcuts to places and that's why everyone mainly uses the bus system.

We finally arrived at Kashiwa station in front of the Crest Hotel Mae and our lovely homestay host Keisei greeted us. She drives the car with the tv on. It was just weird sitting at a stop light and watching commercials on the tv screen. Keisei told us that her mom and daughter were waiting for us to have dinner. So sweet! Keisei and her mom are from Shanghai and speak Mandarin and Japanese. Keisei's daughter, Yuki is the cutest 4-yr old next to my own nieces. Yuki is very talkative and social. I'm pretty sure she's going to be teaching us Japanese on most of our stay here. She calls me "onejiwan" and Elgin "onijiwan" (sp?) - a cute way to say sister and brother. Keisei's husband, Shu, gets home later from work, he's an engineer.

Keisei and her mom cooked us a delicious traditional japanese dinner: mizuna and red bell pepper salad, roasted pumpkin, some green veg - choy dish with enoki mushrooms, and fatty pork with japanese daikon. very tasty! You'll have to see the pictures of the house because they have the coolest bathrooms! The toilet upstairs has a sink built into the top of the toilet. So when you flush, the sink automatically has clean water that you use to wash your hands and recycle into the tank that flushes the toilet. It's just brilliant! The toilet downstairs is called "Washland" kinda like an amusement park? hehe.. well it's basically the super toilet that has all the controls to heat, blowdry, and wash your lil' toosh. Then there's the shower room that is exactly like I said..a whole room. You walk in and there's a large jacuzzi tub and shower head with a shelf and mirror. The water temperature is controlled by a thermostat on the wall. You can choose to stand up like a shower or sit down on the stools to wash yourself and all the water just drains down on the floor. pretty cool shower is all i gotta say...

Our room is very cute -- full sized futon, small desk with small tv, bookcase, and closet. Elgin and I were just thinking how lucky we were to have found this very hospitable family to host us. We both slept very well and I woke up like at 6am. The sun rises at like 5am here and it felt like 10am. I came down to the kitchen to greet the family before they left for work. Yuki was watching some anime that looked something similar to Sailor Moon and taught me "onaji" which means the same. She had a plastic caricature of the anime girl on tv. For breakfast, we had salad and toast. Their toaster is amazing - it makes perfect toast -- no burnt toast at all, you push the toast looking button and out comes perfect warm toast!

Ahh, the simple joys of vacation right?! :) More later as we need to plan and get dressed for our adventure today.