Osaka - day 1

This has been one very long and exhausting day. Have you ever been so tired that it physically hurts to get out of bed? This morning I had to get up at 5:00 in order to get to the airport on time but last night by the time I got to bed it was after 2:00. To make things even more difficult, my strategy for beating jet lag is to stay awake all day so that when I get to Asia I can go straight to bed and because I’m so tired I sleep through the night. That gives you a really good start on getting back on track. The problem is, when you’ve only had three hours of sleep it is pretty hard to stay awake. One piece of good news. After my big "Fathers Day" lunch yesterday I still wieghed in this morning at 199.5, I'm still under 200 pounds. The flight got off to a bad start. We all boarded the plane and then they tell us they have problems with one of the engines. Pretty scary. A half hour later and we're on our way but I'm really hoping the mechanic knew what he was doing. I can't believe the seat I had. I got an exit row right by the door everyone enters through. I had literally ten feet of leg space. How nice. I was actually the first person to exit the plane. I've never done that before. I've been the last person several times but never the first. The pilot also gave a really nice tribute to all the fathers on board the plane. We actually arrived here in Osaka earlier in the day than I’m used to. We actually had tail winds coming over here. I’ve never heard of that before. How can you have tail winds when you’re flying west? We got here an hour early making the flight in about ten hours. I think that is a record for me. The movies were not very impressive. Actually, they had two movies that I’d already seen before that I really liked. I was hoping to see some good new ones. The two movies I’ve already seen were “Mad Money” and “The Bucket List”. The new ones that I watched were, “Definitely, Maybe”, “Under the Same Moon” and “Spiderwick”. None of them were too exciting but Under the same Moon was definitely trying to promote illegal immigration. It was a touching story but VERY one sided and not very realistic. The movies I didn’t watch were, Shine A Light (about the rolling stones) and “The Other Boyle Girl” (about Henry the 8^th and his beheaded wives. Not topics that really get me too excited. I did finish my book though. I hate it when I finish a good book. It is so depressing because I want the story to continue. This was a Tom Clancy book called “End War”. It is one of those books that actually isn’t written by Clancy but he somehow gets his name on it. This one was pretty good though. It was very weird. It is about world war III and takes place in Alberta. Supposedly the Russians deploy troops from the Arctic Ocean and take over Yellow Knife and High Level and major battles take place in Calgary and Edmonton. The Americans blow up the High level brigde in Edmonton and the Russians plant nuclear bombs in the top of the Calgary Tower and the Parliament buildings. It was very weird reading it. The Americans also blew up a convoy of Russian Vehicles on Highway 2 just south of Red Deer heading for Calgary. I’ve driven that highway more times than I could count. It was a good book but it doesn’t really end. I guess there is going to be a sequel. Japan’s immigration is now doing what I keep saying the Americans should be doing. They have a camera and a finger print machine at the immigration counter and every person entering is checked. If we did that then no one on the terrorist watch list could get into the States. It just makes perfect sense to me, not just for immigration but for boarding planes and getting jobs. It would be a form of identification that couldn’t be forged. Oh well, hopefully we will catch up some day. So we landed at Kansai airport in Osaka. Osaka had the same problem that San Diego has. They really needed a new airport but they had no room for it. The Japanese, however aren’t as worried about environmentalists as San Diego is and they simply built their airport in the ocean. This whole airport is all man made by chopping the top off of some mountain and dumping it in the ocean. In the picture taken from my hotel room you can see a new runway that they are building. My hotel is right at the airport and was very convenient to get to. We got off the plane and walked to the hotel room. Very convenient but very expensive. It is also a bit of a disappointment. The room is small and I’m stuck with two little twin beds. Oh well, the convenience is worth it. In the baggage area it was very strange. They had several people walking around with drug dogs. They would walk up to you and the dogs would smell your luggage. I saw at least four dogs and was smelled by two of them. Just having the dogs was pretty effective in deterring smugglers. Well, because we got in a bit early we are going to take a train down town and see what we can find for dinner. I’m going to go shower first.