Since I got home from California two weeks ago, I’ve been running errands like no one’s business. I had everything prepared by Thursday, including my visa and arrangements for my host family to pick me up at the airport. Unable to let a good thing last, I read my guidebook on Friday morning, which informed it would be a good idea to get traveler’s checks in yen. “No problem,” I thought, “I’ll just go to a bank with Japanese branches, like Citibank.” What began as a one-stop trip ended as a fruitless, afternoon-long odyssey to find yen traveler’s checks. If there’s a first piece of advice I have for future Light fellows, it’s to do everything as early as possible. If there’s a second piece, it’s to take guidebook advice with a grain of salt.

I flew to Detroit this afternoon. It was your typical screaming baby flight. I’ve been fluctuating between feelings of excitement and “My God, woman, what have you gotten yourself into?” I was swinging towards the latter when I landed. After working up my courage, I walked (well, moving walkway glided) my way to the gate to Nagoya. I was immediately accosted by Diana, one of my friends from my Japanese class at Yale. We chatted until boarding, after which we had to focus our attention on making it to the back of the plane and wrestling our over-stuffed luggage into the overhead compartments.

When I got bored of last-minute studying for my placement exam, I would watch the first in-flight movie. I didn’t have my headphones in, but from the rhythmic banging of kitchen equipment, spontaneous synchronized dancing, apron wearing, and unexplained STOMP-style interludes in an alley with people who appear nowhere else in the film, I surmise that it was an avant-garde musical about chefs. I’ve since plugged myself into the J-pop station.
Every song on the J-pop station seems to have a rap breakdown. Sentimental, slow-paced love song? It’s okay, but you know what would really make this complete? No, what? A hardcore rap. Yeah! Yeah!

Good times.

What I’m listening to:

風を集めて – Happy End

My Drive Thru – Pharrell, Santogold, and Julian Casablancas

Carmensita – Devendra Banhart

Sentimental Heart – She & Him

Don’t Stop Me Now - Queen

What’s I’m reading: My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead – ed. Jeffrey Eugenides

Written above Canada on August 31st/September 1st