Across the Wild Blue Yonder!

The trip to Japan was significantly better than previous trips I've had. Well, it was definitely better than domestic flights I've taken (of course, the three Benadryl I took helped). Perhaps the worst plane was American Air, but it was one of their older planes.  Cathay really took me by surprise as they provided us not only the usual pillow and blanket for international flights, but headphones as well. One of the more intersting things was also the fact that we were given a menu for the flight, which included a shrimp cocktail.

What.

Movies are sort of a hit or miss thing on long flights, and I jokingly told a friend that the best movie would be the Avengers, because I wanted to see it in Japanese.

Wish granted. They had Iron Man and Captain America as well, but I opted for the Joss Whedon marathon option after Labyrinth and watched both Avengers and Cabin in the Woods.

I forgot to mention, but they also provided an outside camera view during take off and landing, after which we climbed high enough to see the entire continent of North America.

Arriving in Hong Kong was pretty neat, and very smooth despite the typhoon warnings. To make up for the five hour lay-over, we did a lot of exploration, and were surprised to discover that much of the airport looked like a mall. A very ritzy mall. Ritzier than King of Prussia. It was difficult to find out gate, as it continually changed, but while we were in Hong Kong my mind kicked into Chinese and said "Let's think in Mandarin for a bit." It made studying very difficult but was still alot of fun.

The pilot on our flight to Japan warned us we would be flying higher than scheduled to avoid the two typhoons that were heading in out direction. He got us there as smoothly as possible, and with very little turbulence. Landing in Japan was amazing, as the first thing you notice is how blue the ocean is. It's not Ocean City gray or Caribean clear, but a deep blue. Going farther inland also let us take in the mountains, and you could see that many of the towns were built at the base of mountains, with little urban development on them (but trees can hide a lot).

Thus far, Hirakata-cho is pretty fantastic, and the people are as well. Once my internet is good to go, expect pictures from the trip and some posts on food (my favorite)!

~Zenko~