I am in Japan currently. Yasu, Aya, Miwa, and Moko saw Chris and me off at the airport. At that point, I hadn’t slept at all. Once on the plane, I fell asleep before take off. After we landed in San Francsico, and going through security, I discovered that I would have go to outside to smoke. Thus I did. It was beautiful outside, except windy. I met this German guy who was flying back to Munich and works for Oracle while smoking.After that we decided to go down to our gate, G91. They had computer problems, and couldn’t check anybody on the plane until they fixed that. We left an hour late. The flight was uneventful and long. Although, for my first international flight, it was only fitting that I sit next to a few crying babies, that didn’t cry very much and mostly slept.On the plane, even though I had only had 2 hours of sleep, I didn’t sleep for long at all, maybe 2 or 3 of the roughly 10 hours. We landed at 5:15 or so. Customs was a breeze. Everything was a breeze really.The hardest part, was paying the ¥850 for the train ticket to Nagoya, and then finding the exchange center. According to all the documentation twe had, they closed at 6. We did not arrive in Nagoya Station until 6:30. I kept hope though. I just new they had to be open, or something. Sure enough, they were. We got our rail pass, and they look freakin’ awesome. Nice and shiney.We looked at the schedule, and got in line. We were forced to speak Japanese for the first time. The thing that got us through was me saying “Nagoya kara Shin-Osaka kara Fukuoka” to which she replies “Kyou?”, “Hai”. I don’t know excatly what she said, but it was asking about smoking or not. It was broken, but so it goes. As I was not in Japanese mode at all yet, I said I wanted to smoke, then just said “nan demo ii”. I am not sure if that is rude or not, I hope not, but we are in a non-smoking. Which is good, as it didn’t really matter to me (and that’s exactly what I said).Currently, we are on the Hikari Shinkansen to Shin-Osaka. It has a stop left in Kyoto first before we reach the Shin-Osaka. Then it’s a mission to find our train, find a phone and call nathan.We transfered trains just fine, and caught the last train to Fukuoka. I was a bit more confedent in my Japanese skills, and tried to ask a guy if I could borrrow his cell phone. That didn’t go to well, as I could barely make coherent english after being a superman of traveling with Chris.So, the only thing cooler than the Shinkansen, and being able to smoke on said Shinkansen, is vending machines on the Shinkansen. I can see how Vending machines would quickly get quite expensive. ¥150 here, ¥150 there, and before you know it, you’ve spent ¥500 (approx 5 dollars).When we arrived in Fukuoka, we gave Nathan a call. Still a busy signal type thing. We tried using my calling card, change, everything. So I thought, “Maybe, just maybe I wrote down the number wrong….”. Turns out I did. His area code was 090, not 09. It makes all the difference in the world.Needless to say, we got ahold of Nathan, he came to the station and picked us up. I went to sleep at about 3:30 last night, and woke up at about 8:30. Yet I feel great…A quick rundown on my sleep shecdule over the past..3 - 4 days I guess. Wednesday morning I woke up at 9:30 didn’t sleep until Thursday morning at 7:30 for 2 hours. After that, I was awake for the entire 10 hour plane ride minus maybe 3 hours. We landed on Friday at 5:15pm. I slept for maybe 45 minutes on the train down from Nagoya.Seeing us off to the airport.Texas sized cigarettes…in San Francisco?The Train from Nagoya International to Nagoya StationNagoya StationHiroshima Station..I think. I forget where.Hakata Station