The flight and arrival

My last day in the states was on Wednesday August 10^th. I was able to enjoy breakfast at Perkins with some awesome friends and family and then most of us headed to the airport (one had a doctor’s appointment ;) haha). My mom, brother, Bethany, Grandma and Grandpa Hack, and the female Heintz’s visited with me at the airport until I said my good-bye’s/see you later’s and headed up the escalator to go through security. I missed them all the second I could no longer see them. The one thing that made it worse was knowing that I could not even call or text any of them while I was waiting for the flight. My flight from Des Moines to Minneapolis was quick and easy. Once I got off the plane and started looking for my next terminal I was reminded again of how I could not call/text anyone that I had made it safely to Minneapolis. I started heading to my next terminal but was stopped by a candy shop where I got a caramel apple, which was delicious. My two hour delay went by rather quickly and before I knew it I was boarding my one way ticket flight to Tokyo.

The flight was set to be around 12 hours long and I was planning on sleeping most of the way. The seats weren’t that bad, however the guy in front of me had his seat on permanent recline and liked to move around a lot, so it just seemed more crammed than I had expected, but it was not the end of the world. They actually fed us quite a bit on the flight too. I had pretzels and peanuts within thirty minutes of take off. Two hours later we had dinner, which was rather tasty. We had another sandwich about 4 hours later and then about an hour and half before landing we had breakfast.  Once we landed it seemed a little crazy at first but I just started heading to baggage claim hoping that someone would be around there to greet me. I had to fill out some sort of form showing the Japanese government how long I intended on staying and then had to give them my fingerprints (which creeped me out just a little bit). Then I headed to baggage claim put my bags on a cart, then had to fill out another sheet for customs. Once I was done with that I headed through the doors and looked and saw “Dear Ms. Emily (eighth note) Welcome! Koshu, Japan”. I was then greeted by Tezuka(my supervisor), Brittany(another ALT who came to help translate), James(the other sister city ALT), and Leader(the third in charge at the board of education.) They all very graciously began to take my bags as we headed to the car. When we walked outside I was engulfed by humidity. I did not know that it was possible, but I think it may have been more humid than Iowa.  As we walked to the car I asked Brittany why there was an eighth note on the sign, she proceeded to ask Tezuka and said it is just a symbol in Japan.

For those of you who do not know I have an eighth note tattooed on my wrist in memory of my step-father Doug Zook. He loved music and his business was in the music industry. He died on the eighth of September so my mother and I got eighth notes tattooed on us on his birthday a year after he had died. My brother also got one a few months later when he turned 18. The eighth notes that we have are dotted (even though there is no such thing as a dotted eighth note) because when you dot a not it means you hold onto the note longer and since we will be holding on to him forever we got those in memory of him. I am telling you this because it gave me a sense of comfort seeing that on my sign.

We drove the 2-3 hours to Koshu(I napped a lot of the trip) and they brought me to my apartment, (which I found out was different than where I thought I was going to be.) We dropped off my luggage and then they took us and dropped James and I off at his apartment so that I could use the internet to get ahold of some of my family to let them know I had arrived safely.  When I was done James walked me back to my apartment which was about a 5-10 minute walk. I put a few things away and crashed, it was already close to midnight by then. I woke up off and on from being in a new place, but then around 3am I woke up and thought my bed was shaking. I thought in my head did I just feel my first earthquake? No, it couldn’t have been. I decided I wasn’t even going to ask anyone the next day because I did not want them to think I was a crazy paranoid American thinking that any little thing was an earthquake. However, it came up the next day and sure enough I had felt my first earthquake. It only lasted about 10-20 seconds and it kind of felt like my bed just rumbled a bit. Anyways, that was my first night/flight.