At the end of this week, we head to Japan for the school year 2008-09. We thought we'd keep a blog so friends and family can stay in touch. We are new to this format, so please bear with us!
We leave early Saturday, August 2nd and arrive late afternoon August 3rd. We decided the best route would be to take the short flight to New York, and then fly directly from New York to Tokyo (about 14 hours). This makes for the shortest amount of time in the air, and avoids trying to get three-year old Sam back on the plane a second time after, for example, a long flight to the west coast. Our final destination is Kyoto, and there is an airport closer to there (Kansai International, KIX). But there are fewer one-stop options from Boston to Osaka, and we thought a week with the Nagatas would make the transition easier.
The Nagatas are my host family in Tokyo from when I first went to Japan in the summer of 1986 at age 16. I lived with them again for a year and a half 1995-1997, and they are really a second family to me. They haven't met any of my kids yet, so they were pretty eager to have us stay there immediately rather than going up to Tokyo later. They live in part of the "shitamachi" area (near Asakusa), and in this photo Maia is reading up on the local sights.We'll stay for a week there and then head down to Kyoto on the Shinkansen train (the so-called "Bullet Train"). Sam is much more excited about the Shinkansen than the airplane, and I can't blame him! We have been looking at photos of the Shinkansen on the internet, but he says they all "are pretend." We also watched You Tube videos of Japan Airlines 747s taking off. All pretty interesting, but we'll see how he reacts to the real thing.
Well, we better get packed and ready to go!
