nude highway driving

It’s a beautiful Saturday morning in Tokyo — my first full day as a resident — and I’m going to accept this as a sign that this chapter of my life is going to somehow turn out all groovy and shit.

I got up at 7:30 a.m. after miraculously sleeping through the night. (Big YeY for that one — that never happens my first night here). I crashed shortly after nodding off while talking to my coworkers during dinner. Part of this was due to the trip, part of it due to me staying up all night Wednesday night because we had to be at National around 5:30 a.m. and I applied the ol’ college logic that you can’t sleep in if you don’t go to sleep.

I stayed up re-arranging my bags and loading music onto the iPod I bought the day before the trip. Thank God — that thing really made the 14-hour Atlanta-Tokyo trip bearable. For some reason I find it bizarre that there are direct flights from Atlanta to Tokyo. However, I find it painfully evil that Atlanta’s airport was so backed up — the plane waited almost 45 minutes to be able to go to the gate once we landed in Atlanta, and the new plane had to wait in line 45 minutes to take off to Tokyo. Ugh!

My new abode is pretty barren and depressing, but will take shape as I find time. One of my coworkers was kind enough to give me a few food items and some plastic cups, plates and utensils. She also placed Peeps in various locations (I almost took a shower with a couple).

This morning I unpacked stuff for a bit while rocking out to the kick-ass present DeVogel got me just before I left. That thing will keep the room from driving me insane while I wait for the rest of my things to arrive, and keep my life full of groovy tunage.

I sauntered down to Meiji Shrine for a quick prayer to start off my Tokyo life and caught a Shinto service for someone’s new baby. Then I walked through Yoyogi Park and found some okonomiyaki to kick-start my energy. There’s some festival for something going on (there always is on weekends there) and the taiko drummers were out kickng ass.

I’m currently in my favorite little Internet cafe in Shibuya seeking out Wi-Fi spots in Tokyo. Looks like they’re everywhere. Thank God — I look forward to writing e-mails and posts from my own iBook, on which I don’t accidentally toggle Kanji characters every time I try to hit the space bar.

Photos will be aplenty soon.