Agenda

Ok, so here's the deal.

In 1994 I went to Japan for 5 weeks with my college friend Kaori, and I always thought I'd go back someday. Over the years I pretty much concluded that was not going to happen. It's too expensive, George can't take too much time off work, etc, etc...

Then a couple of months ago when Kaori said she's going back to visit her family in April, I suddenly got an itch to go... a really big itch.

So here I go... without George, just me, Kaori, and her two little kids. I'm staying for two weeks, April 16-30.

Tomorrow morning I'm taking off at 9:40 to Detroit, where I will meet up with Kaori, Yashima, and Tokiwa. I'm looking forward to a relaxing lunch there and my last cup of Starbucks before I enter the land of green tea. (Actually, they have Starbucks there, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's $6 a cup).

Then we'll be on a 13 hour flight to Tokyo. After we land around 3am US time, we'll take a four hour train ride to their house. Kaori said her last trip to Japan was a total of 30 hours of travel from her house in Missouri to her parents' house in Yui.

I am going to take tons of photos and video and buy funny souvenirs with Engrish, and draw stuff, and hopefully blog some of it while I'm still over there.

George will be missing me, but he's been working over-time a lot. I sent my fur boy to stay with his grandparents and dog cousins. I'll be back in a couple of weeks with plenty of green tea and Hi-Chew.

Sayonara Minasan!