I'd really like to spend a lot of time describing what my international flight experience was like, but I haven't slept on a bed in 27 hours, and no matter how much sleep you get on a plane or in a van, the quality just doesn't compare. I'll just put some bits and pieces here now and elaborate later.

My hotel room here in Kobe, Japan is smaller and cozier than the New York one, and I'll post pictures of it soon. The toilet was a bit of an unsettling experience since I've never used a bidet or a butt shower before. I was confused by the closet when I first tried to open it. I pulled on the handle, and it wasn't until I thought, "Wait, this is Japan," that I tried sliding it.

It's a little scary how good websites are at tracking your computer's location. Facebook, Google, and Mail.com all recognized that I wasn't in the US anymore, asking for security questions and presenting international, Japanese, or specialized versions of their sites.

I'm lucky that people are very kind and airport employees are very dedicated to ensuring that people make their flights, otherwise getting to Kobe would have been much worse than it was.

I'm going to have to learn how to straddle the language divide. I clearly look like an English speaker, yet I can speak Japanese, but my Japanese isn't that great yet. Most of the employees speak both, but their English isn't very good either. I know I should have been trying harder to communicate more fully in Japanese, but in the whirlwind that was today and my desire to make it to Kobe with as few problems as possible, I muddled through both.

Now, I've summed up the things I wanted to say most, but since I'm tired, details will have to wait until later.