Is This English?

Here I am! I have made it to Japan. I am still excited. I cant find the apostrophe button on the keyboard though and this is disturbing me slightly. I will get over it, it might just take a little bit of time.

So the flight over went well, there was quite a few seats available on the plane so Tony and I had a whole middle row to ourselves. The plane was quite an old one, so there there was only the one big screen for everybody to watch the movie on. There was two movies, one was a Japanese feel good story, the other was some crazy Manga film with this kid and dragons and a giant frog thing that exploded. I wasn`t really watching that one all that much, I was trying to listen to the classical music channel and then later the 80s pop channel. They were enjoyable.

The food on the flight was okay, but there just wasnt enough. I ended up having to eat about 6 packs of the mixed nuts, and they made me very thirsty, which made me go to the toilet alot. I didnt mind too much because it helped break up the otherwise pretty boring flight. I had forgotten how long 9 hours sitting on a plane can be. I even tried to drink a few beers to help knock myself out but I only ended up going to the toilet even more.

Eventually we got here and it has been a little bit surreal. I woke up this morning and I looked over at Tonys bed and I didnt know who he was, or more worringly where I was. Then I remembered. Then I got excited. I will be up in the mountains by tonight. Its going to be terrific.

For breakfast this morning I had some udon noodles with some prawns and something that I think may have been tripe. It was either tripe, skin or just some chewy fat stuff. I had a few bits of it and then left most of that, the noodles were great though. For dinner last night I had some chilli prawns and a duck salad thing. They were great. It was in this little restaurant thing where there were all these Japanese businessmen in black suits smoking their cigarettes and drinking from these giant bottles of sake that they could leave at the restaurant until they returned again. The seats were very low to the ground, as was the table. Speaking to the waitress was interesting, but with the good old nodding and pointing and her giving us the thumbs up we were able to get our dinner in.

Everybody here has been extremely courteous and helpful. I am trying to bust out a bit of Japanese, but it probably sounds worse than their Engrish though. I will keep on trying. It just seems like there are many different ways to greet people and things like that.

My flight to Sapporo has been delayed by an hour and the airline has given everybody a voucher to buy some food. I am going to go and spend it now, try and find something to take with me on this next leg of my journey.