Tsukuba-Dooba-Doo

The morning of departure I awoke at about 4:00 am, which means I got a whopping 1 hour of sleep during the night. Although it was an early rise out of bed, the Haines' and Walker's still managed to be late to the El Paso Airport with hardly enough time to check our bags and get on the flight. In retrospect, it probably made saying goodbye to Katie easier since we didn't have very much time to cry with each other....but we still cried...because that's what we do.

The 15 hours of flying was fairly lacking in adventure as I was able to catch up on all manners of movies and TV, but not sleep...mistake. After arriving in Narita, Matt and were welcomed with about 2 hours of standing in a gigantic blob of people trying to go through Japanese Immigration in a series of poorly ventilated room.

Following our 2 hour bus ride to Tsukuba from Narita, we met with Chihiro. She has been our main contact throughout this whole process so it was really great finally meeting her. We had an amazing dinner at a restaurant by the bus station and was taken to our apartment, the Ninomiya House. After over 24 hours of traveling with about 3.5 hours of sleep within 48 hours....I called it a night.

-Seth