The Longest Day That Has Ever Been... EVER

And I'm not even kidding.

Last night (I guess it was last night), in Seattle, I tried as hard as I could to stay awake for as long as I could, so that I would be able to sleep on the plane. I ended up passing out around one and waking up before 7:00. I spent the rest of the morning (this morning? Very Confused) around Seattle with my parents. Bought some headphones, had some breakfast... tried not to cry. The usual.

We ended up getting to the airport at around eleven, and after a teary goodbye at the start of the security line (by the way, thanks for staring, EVERY SINGLE PERSON that walked by), I met up with Kim and her mom at the gate. Kim's mom flew all the way from Phoenix, Arizona to spend a couple of hours with her before she left for Japan. It was so precious and nice. Plus her mom is really great and funny. I got a quick massage and then it was time to board the plane.

Once we got on the plane (Boeing 777, if anyone is interested), we were sort of waiting around and I noticed this guy that was sitting in the same row as us, but in a different, like, section? The middle of the plane and we were on the sides. Anyway, he was coughing and his face was really red. The flight attendants came back and asked if everything was ok. The guy wasn't really responding to anything, and they ended up calling the paramedics and taking him off of the airplane. While they were moving him from his seat to the wheelchair, the paramedics said that they smelled something, and that they had a "possible Code Brown situation" on their hands. Subtle. After they changed the pad on the seat the guy was sitting on (just in case), we were off. The flight was fun. I slept for about 20 minutes (so much for my plan), and Kim didn't sleep at all. We both watched "17 Again" twice and played Nintendo. We also made friends with a cool flight attendant, who gave us leftover turkey sandwiches from business class. And we did some Yoga in the back of the plane. Eagle pose.

When we finally landed in Narita airport, we made our way through customs and immigration, which took longer than usual. After we got our backs, Kim wanted to consolidate her 5 pieces of baggage into 2 or 3, so she took started to rearrange. Once she was done, she realized that she didn't have her passport. She than began to frantically look for it for about 20 minutes, while I ran through all the possible options as to how we could get out of this situation without it taking too much longer. The best one I came up with was just to run through the customs line and hope they didn't see us. Fortunately, Kim finally found her passport and we didn't need my plan.

We got onto the Narita Express train, which we had paid for to get us all the way through to Yokohama. We decided, though, that since we were staying sort of in the middle between Tokyo and Yokohama, that it would be better to get off in Shinagawa and then go south instead of getting off in Yokohama and having to go back north again. So, with my big suitcase and backpack and Kim's two HUGE suitcases and one small bag and purse and laptop bag, we trudged our way through Shinagawa station (which, by the way, is very crowded around 7 pm). We finally found the right train to get us there, only to watch a couple go past and see that they were all ridiculously full people. We decided it would be better to just take a taxi to Tsurumi (where our hotel is) because "it couldn't be that far".

WRONG.

Tsurumi, it turns out, is about a $75 cab ride from Shinagawa. I won't ever do that again, but at least we got here in an air-conditioned car instead of a hot and stuffy train. Also, the handle on my luggage wasn't really working very well from the start, and when I was trying to push the handle down for the taxi driver to put into his car, it broke. So... I am now in the market for a new piece of luggage.

We finally got to Tsurumi station, and asked some nice "safety officers" where the hotel was. They pointed us the way, and I headed that way, thinking that Kim was right behind me. I crossed the street and got about half a block before I turned to see that she wasn't. When she finally got to me, she was being followed by the three safety officers, who scolded me for not waiting for me and called me "tsumetai" (cold). Ouch.

We are now in the hotel and have the air conditioner on full blast and the coldest it will go, and it will stay that way for the next few days. We are going to meet with our realtor tomorrow to go and check out our (hopefully) apartment, so I am going to go to sleep.

The heat and humidity might actually kill me. Montana's dry, temperate summer did not prepare me for this.

Hope you all are well.