Finally

It was a long day of not sleeping, flying, and trying to navigate in broken Japanese, but I'm finally here. The longer I sit on this bed eating dinner, the more I just want to fall over with happiness and sleep until I can't sleep anymore. That sounds really cliche, but I don't think I've ever been this tired. It's been a really long day.

I booked a flight with Japan Airlines, or so I thought. It actually ended up being a flight on American Airlines which was pretty irritating by the get go. Checking in and everything at the airport went really smoothly, but that should have told me something would go wrong somewhere.

The flight attendants were less than polite in their customer service. All of them looked as if they didn't want to be near that airport. I understand that it's a hard job servicing people all day, but they could at least put a smile on their face and be polite. After getting on our first plane, settling in, and preparing for flight, we were told the plane was out of service. We offloaded and waited for our next flight. I went to ask what would happen with our baggage at the next airport, and a stewardess looked at me and said, "You might want to ask an attendant. I have no idea what you're talking about." She flipped her hair and walked away. She didn't even let me finish, or clarify what I was asking. My question was answered very blatantly by another attendant, and we got on the next plane.

To make matters worse, there was a little boy that screamed for about the first hour of the plane ride. I wouldn't be so upset about this if the child were an infant, but he looked as though he were about four or so years old. He was fully mobile, throwing tantrums when his parents tried to set him in his stroller. He hit me in the head with a balloon toy while I was sleeping (without being reprimanded by his parents upon my waking up), and seemed to scream for attention. I might get some nasty looks by some of you, but I'm starting to lean towards child-less flights. I feel bad for being so upset if there was actually something wrong with the child, but it seemed as though the parents were powerless; the kid was in more control than they were.

Not all of it was bad though. I made a friend named Marin while waiting at the airport. She was really nice and is another exchange student studying in the Kansai region. She made it a lot easier to get from point A to B, and it felt a bit relieving to have a friend.

But it was nice to sit down in a row by myself. I got to lie down and sleep the majority of the way to Japan. :D

That's just part one of my trip. I'll be posting more later after I wake up a bit.

Thanks for reading!