Catch up

There's always something going on here, but I have a little time while lunch is going on, so... Where to begin?
I remember sitting at Logan, forcing down what would be my last cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee for a long time- I'd take the bus to Osaka for one of those right about now. I haven't had coffee since leaving Tokyo.
The flight to Toronto was short, but nervewracking- the plane was small and I really hate flying. The wait for the flight to Narita was about 2 hours, but it went by pretty quickly. I was already worn out from anxiety, and I still had 13 more hours to go before I'd get dropped off in a completely unfamiliar place where I may or may not have difficulty finding my way to the hotel. The second flight was torture. I have a hard time getting up and walking around on planes, since I constantly feel sure that they're about to break apart at any moment. So, I end up spending far too much time sitting ramrod straight, tensed up and clutching an armrest (not both, because apparently I'm one of the only people considerate enough to refrain from sprawling out all over the place). I lost count of the number of Canadian elbows I got jabbed with while curled up in a ball in my own seat, not even calm enough to take up all of my own space. They fed us too often- I left my 'breakfast', which came out an hour before landing, completely untouched. I really hate wasting food, but by that point I felt like death warmed over and was ready to run screaming into Tokyo. Fortunately, the line at immigration for foreigners was really long, so I had some time to calm down. My Japanese is really sparse and it was very lucky that most Japanese working at the different stations are used to dealing with it. The little bit I could speak made a huge difference, though, because instead of just asking the most basic 2-word questions and getting short answers(or other questions I wouldn't be able to understand), I was able to have short conversations with people, which made me happy, and seemed to please them well enough, too. This is the first time I've ever really tried to communicate with people in another language outside of a school, and as difficult as it is when you know so little, it's really rewarding when you can get something across and then understand them too, especially when it's something you would say anyway, regardless of language. Finding the train out of the airport ang getting to Asakusa was actually really easy. The trains feel somewhat like the subway in Boston, but they're mostly above ground. As soon as it left Narita, I could see small towns with farms all over the place. They don't waste space with strip malls and parking lots here. Roads are as narrow as possible, paths between houses even smaller, and every available patch of land has some kind of vegetable or garden plant growing in it. I did see later that there are plenty of industrial areas, but they're just treated differently. Continued in next post-
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