The End of Japan

I kept a journal and will blog about the crazy 2 weeks in Japan. But first, I'll start with the end, my birthday.

I woke up early on January 3rd to catch my plane back to the US. Jon and I had a fun 2 weeks together, but it was high time to head home. Sleeping in the barracks was getting old. After checking in for my flight and heading through security, where they headed me a receipt for getting through A-OK, I caught up with Jill and Julia, my travel companions, and waited for our flight. The All Nippon Airways (ANA) flights show you live footage of your flight. So we watched our plane backing out of its spot and taking off. It's slightly unnerving.

We landed OK in Osaka and had 7 hours to kill before our flight to San Fran. So we found a locker (not before finding an airport Subway and Golden Spoon Frozen Yogurt) and stashed some of our stuff. And we hit the train. Two trains later, and an escort to the cheap seats (oops) we ended up in downtown Osaka at a gigantic shopping mall. There was an underwear store in the train station that looked promising. It was insanely hot, though, so I couldn't get more than a foot in the door. We looked at all of the crazy stores and pushed our way up 6 flights to the restaurant level. We found a fabulous Japanese restaurant and after much picture-pointing, we had a fabulous lunch. At which point I remembered it was my birthday!

The restaurant had the craziest toilets I'd seen to date. Complete with volume setting on the fake-flushing sounds and a button labeled "Powerful Deodorizer".

We did a little shopping and found all kinds of cool and crazy things. Too bad we couldn't get it all back! I was loving the heavy wool capes. We fought our way back to the train station, pooled our final yen and managed to buy 3 reserved seats for the way back.

After getting our stuff out of the lockers, that had a big signed noting what we couldn't store in them - item #2 was "Dead Bodies" - we headed to our next call. We made it through security, where Jill was searched at least three times because of her suspect PowerBar. We picked up 3 cans of bubbly lemon liquor that was delish and got good and tipsy before boarding. We moved people to all sorts of seats to ensure that we could sit together and settled in. A mini-bottle of wine and 3/4 of an ambien later, and I was waking up to my second breakfast of January 3rd!

I got a "Happy Birthday, ma'am" from the customs agent and made it through with no problems. Back to sadly normal toilets. Soup in a bread bowl was lunch number 2. And then I hardcore passed out waiting for the plane. Twitching and everything in the boarding area seats. I was supposed to be watching Jill and Julia's stuff. It didn't move as far as I know.

The last flight was uneventful, except for being moved by my seatmates so they could quit talking me my dead body. (Don't worry - it wasn't in a locker.) Our driver Sven picked us up and managed to fit all of our luggage in the trunk before quietly shuttling us up north. I hardly remember the ride home, but managed to stay away long enough to turn in rent, empty the mailboxes, shower and find some food. I popped one more Ambien for the road and passed out at 9p. I slept for an amazing 14 hours, thus ending the longest birthday ever!!!