Hey, look what I just found.

This is pretty cool.
http://www.lifeinthefastlane.ca/worlds-longest-escalator/offbeat-news

He later found out that its NOT actually the worlds longest, but still pretty cool.





And as an added bonus, I'll show you all what it's like going up it. Not as good as actually being there, but you get the idea.

Photobucket Bandwidth

I know while I was there, I exceeded my bandwidth on Photobucket, so from now on I'll be hosting all my pictures on Imgur.com. Much easier to use.
The Photobucket pictures are back to normal now, but I wouldn't be surprised if they exceed bandwidth later this month. I'll switch those links over to Imgur one of these days.

Already a Week!

It's already been a week since I got back and it went extremely fast. 
While I was in Japan, time just seemed to slow down. I'm not complaining or anything, though. I'm finally over my jet lag and over the mild cold I got from the plane. 

I've been picking away at the videos I filmed while I was there, so I'll soon have a DVD made with all the pictures and videos if anyone wants one.

I was curious the other day and I checked plane ticket prices on Delta.com just to see what they were at. They were under $1000! And even the website that I bought the tickets originally from were still over $1000. It's crazy!

I have been reading through my Lonely Planet Japan book and finding things that I didn't get a chance to do while I was there. Next time I go, I'm hoping to spend at least a month there. Perhaps the end of July to the end of August. We'll see how life is going at the time, but I definitely want to be in Hiroshima for the Lantern Floating Ceremony next year. 


I've noticed my sleep schedule has changed quite a bit. I used to get to bed around 3am or so and wake up around noon or after. Now I'm in bed around midnight and get about around 9. I like it. And all but one of my classes are before noon, so that should work out quite nicely. 


For those of you who don't know: my neighbors suck at life. I'm living in a townhome/duplex sort of thing and these immature morons on the other side of the wall are so LOUD! They'll go out drinking every night, come home about 2-3am and start slamming things all over the place and stomping. They have two untrained dogs that they lock in the bathroom while they're gone. They've been living there for about 6 or 7 months or so and, as far as I know, they have not payed their trash bill once.

Well, I think they finally did pay it, or at least some of it, because right now at the end of their side of the driveway is their trash barrel and about 30 bags of trash surrounding it. (I say "some of it" about their trash bill because garbage day was last Wednesday and I think the garbage man only took what was in the barrel).
And, from what I understand, their garage is even worse. Ugh, I can't wait for them to move out. I can't believe I can't smell it from over here. Just ew!

And they have dog crap all over their yard...


I'm going to bed, my contacts are drying out. 
Night.

Ugh, I think I caught a cold or something on the plane ride. I'm all congested and blocked up. It pretty much SUCKS!


And I've still got jet lag. I keep waking up at like 0500 and can't get back to sleep. I'm always ready to pass out around 1800 while at work. Ugh.

But the good news is I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico.



I weighed myself this morning when I woke up. I lost 10 pounds while I was in Japan. I am now down to about 150. Sweet. I feel so skinny.

I also picked out some of my favorite pictures, went to the little picture printing kiosk at Walmart and printed them out. 68 pictures for $20. On 4x6's. Wasn't too terrible.

I also bought Disturbia while I was there. Still an excellent movie.



It's currently 0615 and I'm pretty hungry. I could go upstairs and toast a bagel with some jelly, or I could have a bowl of cereal. Or both?

Yeah, both sounds good.



I have to work today, again. I hope I can stay awake for the whole 12 hours. :(

But at least they'll have free cookies today. I may have to stock up.

I also need to claim 2 on my taxes. I had put 0 when I changed them back from 9. Oops, too much taken out. Ouch. Hell, maybe I could claim 3.



I'm gonna go have breakfast and start my day right with two scoops of raisins.

Or toast.

I'm now home.

I'm home now! Finally! I thought It'd never make it.
And yay, all my blog links are in English.
They were all in Japanese since it was Japanese internet. That was fun.

Wow, what an interesting trip, though.
I left my sweet hotel and started my half mile walk to the train station with all my bags in the sticky humidity. I had to wipe sweat from my face every 2 minutes. Bleagh.

Anywho, I got to the station, got my ticket to Narita Airport. 1000 yen. Ouch. Oh well.
While standing in the station, I found a trash that accepts pets...

I know I saw it move a bit...

Anyway, I got to the airport early. Probably at about noon. So I walked around, got some food. I had some delicious "Ethnic Chicken Rice"
Just chicken and rice with some peppers in it. Mmmm. I even ate it with waribashi. (Disposable chopsticks).

I finished eating and wandered around some more. Saw group of flight attendants, so I had to get their picture. :P


That was fun. And pretty random.

I got to my gate, gate 25, and sat around until it was time to board the plane at 3.
As I was trying to figure out where the end of the line was, I met a really really awesome girl, Yukiko. We stood in line and talked about everything. She goes to college in Iowa, and she's 22. She's been studying English almost all of her life; it was pretty good. And she's pretty cute. :P
We boarded the plane and went to our seats (Yukiko and I weren't sitting next to each other)
I ended up sitting next to these two Australian women who were going to be traveling around the US. They were pretty fun.
Well, finally, 3:55, our departure time, came and went. We sat on the plane for a good hour after the captain came on and said, "Ladies and gentleman, this is your captain speaking. Kohneecheewah..." (I laughed pretty hard at that and made fun of him the rest of the flight). "...we are currently experiencing some problems under the aircraft. There is a clamp that seems to be broken. We're currently in contact with Minneapolis trying to get it fixed, but if we can't get it fixed, we will need to switch planes. Sorry for any inconvenience."

Needless to say, we had to switch planes.
They gave us coupons for $10 for any vendor in the airport and 2000 bonus FF Miles.
Yukiko and I sat near our new boarding gate, gate 24, until we were able to board.
They just HAPPENED to have an extra plane of the exact same model just LYING around. Somethings fishy. They probably just moved the broken clamp plane to the new gate. Oh well.
We finally took off at about 6:15PM.

The inflight movies were pretty good. They played Disturbia with Shia Lebeouf (or however you spell it). I thought he did an excellent job. He's a pretty good actor. Maybe someday I'll be in a movie with him... and show him how it's done. :P

About 9 and half hours later we arrived at LAX where the people are just so gosh darn friendly. Yay.
Took about an hour to get off the plane, get luggage, get through customs, and get in line to get a new flight to MSP. Since I saw the one I was supposed to be on take off.
Yuki and I stood in line, got new flights, went through baggage check, and parted ways. My flight was in about 10 minutes, while hers was a few hours later. We exchanged Emails and parted ways.
I found her Facebook, here’s a nice picture of her:


I got home around 10:30pm, unpacked, and slept.
Gotta get used to the new timezone. Ugh.

Well, that's all I've got for today.
Sayoonara!

Tony-san