Leaving Japan

Our wonderful year in Japan has come to an end.  This will be our last blog post since we are now back in America.

We were very lax about photographing our final days in Japan.  There are no photos of our days of packing up all our stuff and sorting out things that we needed to give away, or of the great pizza party with some of our friends in our last night at our apartment.  Tragic.

But we did photograph our last few hours in Japan.

We stayed in a hotel in the airport the last night in Japan because we had a flight out early in the morning.  The hotel airport was fairly grandiose, with a free onsen and breakfast.  The rooms were very large for Japan with lots of room for our 8 bags (4 checked and 4 carry on).

I loved the view out the hotel window.  It was just like sitting in an airport terminal.

After checking in to the hotel, we snuck back in to the city to meet up with our friends for beers and sushi.

I tried some adventurous sushis...  Here is octopus on the left and some strange translucent minnows on the right.  You might be able to see their eyeballs if you look at the picture in large view.

After a fun evening, we got back on the train to the airport.

It was one of the last trains of the night, so almost no one went all the way to the airport on the train.  By the second to last stop, we were the only ones in our car.

Some of our favorite things in Japan:

Bre- the food, the politeness and quietness of people in public places, public transportation...

Kyle- Language Corner (a weekly language exchange program at Hokkaido University),  HIOC (the outdoor club we belonged to), downhill skiing, Miso Ramen, and the best sushi in my life at Otaru.

The end!
-Bre and Kyle

Boeing 787

On my trip to the US last week, I got to ride on the new Boeing 787 on my ANA flight from Seattle to Tokyo.  I was extremely excited.  Since I used to live in Seattle, I had followed the design, building and test trials of the 787 for years.  ANA, the first airline to buy 787s started flying them to the US about a month ago-- I had been anticipating my Seattle-Tokyo flight since then.

The 787 was indeed super awesome.  Here's me standing at my seat in coach.  The plane was very spacious.  It was cool to sit in seats that were really new, with nothing broken.  The clean, new bathrooms were also a perk.

 In general, most things were identical to any other long-distance plane set-up.  The movies, games, etc. were the same as the 777 I took from Tokyo-Chicago at the start of my trip.

 The best thing was the windows.  They were larger than windows in other planes, and they didn't have a shade.  Instead, you adjusted the darkness of the window.  I really liked how even when the window was darkened, you could still see out of it!

Here's a picture of the plane after we arrived in Tokyo.

Off to passport control!  

That's all for now!  Only a few more days left in Japan.

-Bre (and Kyle)