We arrived safely in Japan and took a bus for a couple of hours to get to our motel. The bus parked a few blocks away and we had to roll our luggage in the rain. I was quite surprised to walk into my room and find a computer hooked to the Internet with free Internet. We went for a stroll and found The Grand Festival with dancing, flower arranging, music, etc. I have pictures but jet lag is starting to catch up with me so I am heading to bed. It' nine o'clock at night here.

It's bright and early Friday morning and we'll soon be boarding the bus for the airport. The luggage arrived about midnight last night - what a relief. I did discover this morning that I left my makeup bag in the car (in the rush to the plane I missed yesterday I was putting my makeup on in the car) so I guess there will be a little shopping in the airport. I would hate not to look beautiful (that's a stretch). The temperature is around 50. It looks like it is 75 in Tokyo. The picture is the view from my window in San Francisco.
We should arrive in Tokyo at 2:30 on Sunday. It's hard to believe I will be in Japan in a just hours.

Day one and what a day! When I originally got the email of my itinerary my morning flight was 9:08. I knew that Laurie had left at that time too. When my e-ticket receipt came I never looked at it again. When I got to the airport this morning I found out that the 9:08 flight does not exist anymore and I was supposed to be on the 7:30 flight. SO... what a great way to start the trip. I got switched to Northwest but would not get into San Fran until 4:30 - my orientation started at two. But what could I do? When I got to Minneapolis a San Francisco flight had been delayed almost two hours by fog in the Bay area so I got the last seat - only my luggage didn't make the flight. I arrived in San Francisco and got to the hotel just as the orientation meeting was over. It is now almost ten o'clock and no luggage yet. It could be a long, expensive six weeks without my luggage. The Fullbright staff is great. They went over our schedule and gave me a few tips for the coming days. Sounds like quite an adventure.

Today is Monday and I am busily preparing to travel to Japan. The weather in Grand Forks has been rainy and cloudy with highs in the middle 60's. We are sharing the outdoors with many mosquitos - sometimes this bug can get quite annoying. I wonder if Japan has mosquitos. I wonder what the weather wil be like. I wonder if I will remember everything. I wonder........