My first flight was just a hop from Milwaukee to Chicago. Though I got to the airport around 3:30am with my father, the ticket lines did not open till 4:00. My flight began boarding at 4:30 so I had no time to get breakfast in before I got on the plan. I sat next to a lovely woman who was headed to San Francisco for a wedding. It turned out we were on the same flight to San Francisco so we walked together to our gate and barely had a chance to grab my last American McDonald's meal before jumping on the next plan. The lady was only across the aisle from me and we chatted a little. She has a son who's been to Japan before and she gave me some of his tips - such as buying food from convenience stores for a cheap and surprisingly well-prepared lunch. I looked at this encounter as a sing to be open and chat readily with people on my tour - hopefully this will get me more pleasant experiences.

My next flight was where I joined up with some of my tour-mates. I managed to mingle a little as we got in line and did not feel so alone anymore. Their excitement read on their faces, but I felt shyness seeping from their smiles as our journey still seemed surreal before we set foot on foreign soil. Amazingly, she was 21 and a creative writing major just like me! Although she is focusing on fiction, I believe we both felt an instant spark and connection between us. Before the halfway mark on the flight, she had already voiced she had hoped we'd be roommates and when I agreed, we held up our hands together and touch our excited dancing fingers together.

The flight was 10 hours long, which I did not decided to calculate beforehand. Being practiced in international flights, I knew it would be long and preferred ignorance to the real time. But it was not horrible. I was lucky and the seat next to me was free, so I was able to lean on it to sleep, stow my extra belongings, and keep the map displayed on the open screen to countdown our time till arrival and track the plan's progress across the ocean. Children of Dune and Shadows on the Moon (the one based on Cinderella but set in a fictional Edo-period Japan) were my companions for most of the flight till my eyes hurt and I changed to watching the Lego movie. It made me laugh because I was missing my desk staff social that would be watching the same movie that very night. It was good and very funny and surprisingly meta-fictional. But not better than Frozen, not in the least - in my humble opinion of course. I then figured I better try to get some sleep since we would be landing at 3:00pm Japanese time and I had been awake since 2:00am Wisconsin time. I turned on Mary Poppins to lull me to sleep, which proved a fruitful decision with the help of my Studio Ghibli playlist.

When we were give our immigration and custom forms an hour before landing, I was surprised to find I was one of the few of our gathered cluster who had filled them out before and I believe I earned some friendship points for assisting them. We got off and gathered with a large group of more tour-mates, few who's faces stayed planted in my mind. We were corralled though immigration, where they fingerprinted us, a first for me despite my six visits to other countries. Then we met up with even more strangers who were to be tour-mates to collect our luggage before turning to customs, which was a simple pass of the passport before being ushered through to Japanese soil. Awaiting us was even more of tour people and by now every face was a blur, but the people I had sat near to on the plane. At last our guide, Nago popped up and attempted to create some order among our ranks. Some people when to exchange money, while others picked up various phones, which made my heart jump at my sudden uncertainty if my pocket WiFi was to be sent to the hotel or if I should be picking it up here like what seemed like everyone else. In the meantime, some people voiced they already had $1,000 in yen with them. With only $200 in yen hidden in my backpack, I began to worry even more. But my instincts held me to the group of Americans standing around flabbergasted as locals shuffled past. Nago pointed us to the bus waiting for us outside and I went with the first group to drop off our bags.

After handing our luggage to the driver with a few bumbled arigatos, we stood in a circle awkwardly. Only one girl seemed completely relax as she took a ukulele from her bag and began to play lazily before finally opening up the conversation among us. This got a couple of the people talking and from my first impression, everyone seemed cool. Finally the partial group was gathered together - other unknown tour-mates had a late flight or had a flight delayed. We boarded the bus and began our dive into Osaka.

It was not pretty. That may seem rude, but it was rather foggy and smoggy and city-like. There were shipyards and tall apartment buildings and it was just like every other city that ever was. I realized I had quite the idealized vision of Japan in my head. At first, I believed this would be disheartening. Looking out at the grey city, no one chose to sit next to me, Nago announced that tour guides (aka himself) were expected to be tipped $6 per day instead of the $3-4 the company had told us previously, I felt my expectations dissolving. I expected to feel lost and scared and panicked and regretful, but I did not. Looking out at the neutral colored apartment buildings and the amazon.co.jp warehouses, the trip finally felt real to me. I was really in Japan, the real Japan, not just tourist central. And it made me happy and excited and though I was alone in my seat and there was nothing extraordinary to take pictures of, I was so happy to just be there. It wasn't what I had imagined up, but it was real and I was really there and what an adventure it would be.

We arrived at our hotel, which was merged with all the other stores and venus in one giant city-block building. The name of the first hotel I stayed at was Ark Hotel Osaka Shinsaibashi. Nago began handing out hotel room keys, announcing for us to form pairs. I happily paired up with the girl I had gotten to know on the flight. She collected our key, which instead of edges had spherical dents in it like air bubbles. After a successful roommate and key collection, I felt confident enough to approach the desk with a practiced "Rentafone. Watachi wa Bruce Carolyn desu." The girl just nodded and then looked blankly at the gather packages in front of her. This deflated my confidence in the little Japanese I thought I knew. I located one with my name, pointed to it, and the girl handed it over to me. We went up to our room and after reading stories about the tiny rooms in Japanese hotels, I was happy to see the room was only slightly smaller than standard sized US hotel rooms. My roommate took quick showers and tried to settle our stuff in before Noga called up to our room, reminding us of our time limit. We hurried out to meet the rest of the tour group. Noga announced that he would be taking us to the shopping arcade area, where we would get about an hour and a half of free time before we met for our welcome dinner.

Noga steered us outside, where he lead us to an underground road that lead to the subway and beyond that, underground stores! This should not have been so fascinating to me, but it reminded me of the underground roads and stores in Pokemon games and just made me really happy. Plus they were so clean! We found a 711, which Noga warned us would be the only place with ATMs that accepted US cards and suggested we all take out a large amount. He assured us we could carry large sums on us as the crime rate in Japan was very low and in previous tours, forgotten/lost wallets and purses had been returned to them untouched. I jumped at the chance and just took out the largest withdrawal it offered, which I realize now is a lot. But I pushed off the fear, knowing we would have to pay for nearly all of our meals and would be getting railway cards and of course shopping for clothes and souvenirs alike and all the tipping required of us. I figured get what I needed now and save time. Of course, I had no small bills and realized that would be troublesome and worried stores would not take my 10,000 yen bills (equivalent to $100)! But worries were for the restful and at that time Noga hurried us out the 711 and back to the surface where there were stores and lights and billboards and signs everywhere. It was like a crazy, inexpensive, Time Square. Noga lead us through the arcade, which was filled with all kinds of flashing lights and games - including one where you could attempt to catch digital fish just like at festivals and a zombie school girl attack. I know some people were really excited about it, but not being an avid gamer, I was more interested in the many store signs proclaiming "sale!"

First we head to a camera store, where a lot of the devices were cheaper than they were in the US. Next we went to Daiso, the 100 yen store. I went pretty crazy in there. It was so much better than the DollarTree at home, which I love way too much to be healthy. I instantly wanted EVERYTHING! I grab a rice bowl for myself decorated with wispy flowers and birds and one for a friend with sakura blossom. I also got myself a chopstick rest and Japanese soup spoon with daisies on it. Then I grab two fans, one folding and one circular, mostly wanting them for myself, but figuring if I couldn't find souvenirs to bring back they would suffice. Then we went to clothing stores, but we were on a time crunch and everything was expensive, so no one purchased things.

We had an all you can eat dinner in an Osaka style restaurant. We had to take off our shoes to go in and the tables were low on the ground with a space underneath for our legs to hang. There was a vegetarian section set up for me and the other vegetarian on the tour. However, most people chose to sit at the other tables and only three omnivores joined us. Therefore our meal was much quieter than the others. The meal was good and I even got to have an extra dish after the waitress misunderstood one of my tour-mates. It was a pickled plum rice with tea. I was interested when I saw it on the menu, but didn't want to order more since there was already so much food. It was very tasty, but the pickled plum was sour just as rumored to be. I am going to have to avoid it when I get onigiri as my go to to go meal.

Our table was finished and tired before the others, so I was the brave one to go up to Nago-san (I realized at that time this was a much more polite way to address him) and ask if we could return to the hotel by ourselves. This actually created wave of people who wanted to go to the hotel rather than continuing to explore the nightlife. We all were pretty jet-lagged after all.

At the hotel, I struggled to call home using the various apps I had downloaded for communication abroad. WhatsApp messenger had been working well with my pocketWiFi, though it did take it awhile to send the texts. Using KakaoTalk for calls proved to be difficult the first night. The connection was staticy and there was a delay. It proved to be too hard to deal with on my first night, so I gave up and turned my attention to sleeping. The beds were hard and the room was hot, but I slept soundly for a good chunk of the night before waking up regularly every hour. Oh the wonders of time change.