Hello from the future!! Well, about 16 hours ahead of you guys in North America...

Let me start off by saying the flight was about 9 hours. Good thing we had screens on the back of our seats. At first they didn't work...that would have been wonderful. But I watched 3 movies.

We arrived in Narita, which is the airport outside of Tokyo. We had left Seattle at noon and arrived in Japan at 3pm. Which meant we were basically going to be awake for 24 hours straight. My brother, Scott, met us at the airport then pushed us on some train to travel to God knows where. We traveled across the rural country side, passing rice fields and little houses. I was sad to say that I saw no Raiden hats working in the fields. We arrived in Sakado, which is the town Scott lives in, and about 30 miles from Tokyo. It is a small town...with about 100,000 people...yeah, I thought that was funny too. But seriously, most of the time it is DEAD around here. You don't see a soul walking on the narrow streets. No lights on in the houses, nothing. Everyone is either sleeping or in the city working. Our first night here, we went to eat Yaki Niku...Korean BBQ. I think I spelled that wrong. But it was soooo good. After, my brother and I went and got these Lemon flavored alcohol things called Chuhi's...7% alcohol and 100% wonderful. We went to a park that had a roller coaster thing. You sit on a rope with a rubber ball at the end and fling yourself along this track that goes up and down and curves. It was AWESOME.

We also went to Shibuya, which is where Lost In Translation was filmed in Tokyo. It was crazy. I have yet to see it at night, but I hear it is quite the light show. Let me tell you about the people. If us ladies wore what they wore, we would be considered 5 dollar hookers. Imagine this: Daisy dukes with baggy shirts with one sleeve hanging off the shoulder, dollar store looking GOLD jewelry...and this is the kicker...EVERY girl wears high heels with knee high socks or leg warmers. And most of their high heels are to big for them. So the straps are hanging off the back or the heels are broken. They don't care. It's like they saw the shoes and HAD to have them, no matter what size they were.

From Tokyo, we rode the bus home at about 11pm. It was packed. We saw a lot of drunk business men. Wow, they could hardly walk.

Anyway, we rode bikes around Sakado. Everyone rides bikes with baskets and these little bells. They have bike parking lots with public bike pumps. We got a lot of looks when we ride them...there are only 4 white people in Sakado, and my family is that four. Last night my brother and I went to a karaoke bar by ourselves. You pay $10 an hour and get all the drinks you can drink in that hour. Sooo we played for 2 hours and got hammered off gin and tonics. Then some random Japanese girls busted into our room while we were singing Bohemian Rhapsody. They sat down giggling and touched my hair and hugged me because I was an American girl. It was fun. They tried to sing along, but just made sounds that sounded like the song. Then we rode our bikes home...drunk...but it's ok, because we had lights on our bikes. And today, it started rainging all day. We bought these 100 yen (about a dollar) umbrellas that were different colors. We went to the zoo and saw LING LING!! I love him. He is a famous panda bear for those of you who are uneducated...or maybe you are just familiar with Ling-Ling brand pot stickers...fatties. But I accomplished two lifetime goals today. One petting the most evil creature in the world: the chicken, and two, riding on a 1970's bike with a wonkey tire, in the pouring rain, in the dark, on narrow streets, with cars jetting out from random driveways, one hand on the handle bar the other holding my ghetto umbrella and trying to ring my bell so people can get out of the way. Me: 2...Japan: 0. Mission completed.

So that has been my trip so far. I know this is a long e-mail, but I feel like there is so much to explain about this crazy country. It really is a culture shock. But it's more a shock to my bank account then anything else. Yikes. Hope you all are well.
Lindsey