Thee Trip....

Yo, Japan is unbelievable. I've traveled nationally and internationally all my life and know every geograhic region or international city has it's own unique style and flare but I was not fully prepared for the cultural exposure I would encounter in Japan.

The plane-ride over:
I was complaining to MM why I had to spend almost a thousand dollars for business class tickets. Lets just say I'll never question her again. I parked at my office at JFK then began what turned out to be a 18 hr trip. I've flown to Europe many times so I was use to 7-8 hour flights, but after you pass the 10-hour mark I was starting to feel like ugghh...enuff already. You can only sleep so much, listen to an ipod so much, read so much after a while you just get antsy....and this was in business class. Man, I can't imagine doing this trip in coach. I did find it fascinated though to actually cross the international date line which separates today from tomorrow. We left JFK Monday morning and all of a sudden (well not really all of a sudden) it was Tuesday afternoon. We landed in Tokyo that evening then took another flight for an hour to Osaka. By the time we arrived at her folks house it was Tuesday night and 18 hrs later after leaving JFK. After all the pleasantries I crashed immediately. I woke up in the morning and realized it was Wednesday. I was just Monday morning, it bugged me out a lil bit.


The trip:
Her parents were very nice and spoke surprisingly good English. They have a fairly large home compared to Japanese standards, they also hosted a foreign exchange student from Vegas named Max so that made me feel a lil better. All the things you hear and connect with Japanese culture is for the most part....true, the constantly bowing, immediately taking your shoes off in the vestibule.

I couldn't get past one thing though initially. I saw NO black people...NONE. While we was in Osaka for the first 4-5 days I teased MM and started a daily watch for anyone with dark skin. Day 2...no blacks seen. Day 4...no blacks seen. Thank god when we arrived back in Tokyo there were plenty of blacks....even a couple Jamaican cats which made me smile, LOL...We stayed in a very upscale hotel for the last 4-5 days and it seemed like there were more blacks in the hotel than whites. Yes, it seemed like we were all looking or searching for each other, LOL. That definitely put me in a better comfort zone for the rest of the trip.

Overall Japan is amazing. We get so caught up with America and its short history, one can really forget about the rest of the world. Tokyo is so advanced even beyond NY, so fast moving almost supersonic speed, yet you travel like a half hour away you can be at a Shrine or a Temple thats like 2,000 years old. You feel like your in an atmosphere like 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon' or 'The Last Samurai' when you explore the old ruins and temples. When you add that with the language, climate, the fact the they drive on the other side of the street and their steering wheels are on the right side of the car it takes some getting adjusted to. I loved it none the less though. I don't know if I'll ever be back in Japan but I'm so glad MM convinced me to go. She was a wonderful host and made me feel like a champ. Shoo, that just had me thinking... My 3rd day there I had two 80 yr old something Japanese women wanting to touch me and feel me like they had never seen a black person before. Someone said she hadn't seen more than 5 black people in person in her town since the war. Folks we're talking WWII.....Wow!