Today, Monday, Oct 3, was spent mostly getting acclimated to the time zone differences and getting things in order for the stay. The house where my cousin and her husband live. I also had a small tour of the town area , but not enough to really get a sense of what is where, and the directions (compass) just yet, although when the sun pokes up from the clouds it’s pretty easy to tell which way is which.

On the first day of my month-long trip to Japan, I went to bed about 11:00PM Friday, Sept 30th, and woke up at 2:00AM on Saturday, Oct 1st being unable to get much sleep due to excitement and stress of making sure I hadn’t forgotten or missed anything. Clearly the start of a very long day. I flew out from Spokane, WA at 6:00AM and landed in Portland, OR approximately 1 hour later.