航空券 (Plane Tickets)

So it's sinking in bit by bit. I'm actually going to Japan. Holy hand grenades of Antioch! (reference: Monty Python, paying special attention to the Book of Armaments). Anyway... I bought a plane ticket to George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IATA Airport Code: IAH)—in other words, to Houston. And then from there to Japan. Read more for flight details you don't want to know:

• Scheduled departure: March 31 at 9:55 p.m. HST (Hawaiian Standard Time)
• Scheduled arrival:      April 1 at 5:56 p.m. CDT (Central Daylight Time)
• Total time in the air:   9 hours 56 minutes
• Layover:                    In Seattle Tacoma International Aiport
• Time:               From 6:45 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. PDT (Pacific Daylight Time)

No, this isn't a cruel April fools joke on my mom. That's terrible; how could you think that? :P So if you're going to be in Seattle around the layover time, let's kick it! As an absolutely necessary segway, did you know that CDT stands for "Central Daylight Time" and refers exclusively to the U.S. central time zone during Daylight Saving Time (DST)? CST is for "Central Standard Time" and is used when not observing DST. And now we're accumulating waaay to many Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs). Check the Wikipedia God for reference and TMI (too much information).

Back to the not-so-nonsensical nonsense, buying this ticket was somewhat poignant for me. The whole leaving-home part of moving was very "aww, sad" and real. But it still lives in abstract-land most of the time, as it usually does for me until about ten minutes after the boarding craziness has blown over. Interestingly, though, when I bought the Japan ticket, it didn't really feel all that sad or exciting or anything. Warning, more unsolicited details follow:

• From IAH (Houston, TX) to ITM (Ōsaka, Japan)
• Scheduled departure: April 15 at 7:40 a.m. CDT
• Scheduled arrival:      April 16 at 7:10 p.m. JST (Japanese Standard Time)
• Total time in the air:   14 hours 26 minutes
• Layovers:                   San Francisco, CA, and Narita, Japan (NRT: Narita International Airport)

For those of us overachievers who astutely wonder, "Ōsaka? But the last post said Nagoya." This is indeed intentional. As some may be aware, my mom and pops (that's what I call Bob) hosted a (very pretty) Japanese student last spring. Her name is Chisato; she goes by Chi:

Chisato Iwasaki—Very pretty

She live in Ōsaka and her family has welcomed me to their home for a few days, before I take the 新幹線 (that's the Bullet Train) to Nagoya on the morning of the 19th. I'm excited. However, English isn't exactly their forté and Japanese isn't mine, so the magic of emphatic hand waving and smiles and none of that really working will be frequently summoned. So, yeah, I think it will be fun. Actually, with broken Japanese and broken English, we should be just fine.

Anyway, setting this whole thing up with her (via many mutually misunderstood emails, and all of them from her written in that my-heart-is-going-to-die-of-cuteness four-year-old English) helped to make it sink in a tad, a bit and a smidge.