We arrived in Japan in the late afternoon of August 17, 2005 (Wednesday). It took at least two hours to get through immigration, 2 minutes at customs, an hour or so by airport bus to the Tokyo station, where we were met by a Waseda University student and got a taxi, then another 20 to 30 minutes to our apartment. Everything went well (except for the exceptionally long wait in line for immigration). Also an earthquake apparently happened in Japan while we were in route to Japan. We have heard little about it. It didn’t seem to have much effect on life in Tokyo, but was a bit disconcerting to hear about an earthquake just as we were moving here.
Leaving from Seattle was a good decision because it was a 9.5 hour flight—the shortest either David or I have ever had to Asia. David slept for an hour or so, but I didn’t actually sleep on the flight.
The Waseda student, Suzie, was very helpful at showing us how to use things in our apartment as all directions are in Japanese. We went out to do a bit of shopping because the apartment was nearly empty except for furniture and some dishes. We had some toilet paper, soap, and light bulbs, but no food or drinks. We went to bed around 9:30 Tokyo time, which was morning is Seattle. We were tired, but woke up at 4:30 am on Friday. Since then we have woken up between 5:30 and 7:00 every morning and gone to bed at a reasonable time. It never really felt like we had any jet lag.