Your first night in Japan and you what???

Got lost? no. (ok slightly). Got mugged?no. Met many interesting people and stayed out until 3:30am? YOU BET! But that comes later in the story. So let us start at the beginning, at 4:30am on Saturday the 2nd of December (too early for you?).

4:30am brought the rather loud, unbearable, teasing beep of my alarm- time to get up, shave, shower, dress and lock my bags, head to airport. Waking your parents at 5am isn't normally an easy task to accomplish, but they promptly rose, and my Father drove me to the airport- incessantly giving me tips about safety while abroad- "Don't let anyone see you have money on you", "keep in touch every day", "watch out for the traffic,we don't have anything like it in Sydney"- I guess it is the little things like these comments that let you know they care.
The flight from Sydney to Melbourne was rather uneventful, minus the crying/screaming babies that inhabit economy class across the world (I have a theory that they are planted by the airlines to make more people upgrade to business class in the future), but it was the flight from Melbourne to Japan that held a some interest. (figures that an international flight is always eventful)

After settling myself in to my seat I met my neighbour to be, an ex-pat from Russia who was returning to oversee a building project that he was in charge of- I never actually got his name, we just talked the whole time, then the fun began. About half way into the flight a man who had drunk too much began to chase the hostesses around the plane, grabbing a few bottoms that he shouldn't have- that is when a small amount of raised voices could be heard. He tried to slap a hostess on the rear, she turned around, pointed at him and said "don't you touch me!"- the male host's had to step in and tell him in Japanese to sit down- he kept wanting more alcohol. Other than that, I got to watch some thought provoking movies: "Solo"- an Australian movie about a hitman who wants to retire, "X-men:The last stand" (though I wouldn't call it thought provoking), and "Lucky Slevin"- A movie starring Bruce Willis, Josh Hartnett and Morgan Freeman.

By 9:30pm (Japanese time- 11;30pm Australian) I had managed to make it from the Airport to my hotel in the middle of Tokyo- promptly dropping my things in my room, meeting a guy from Denmark by the name of Jan (You'll get to see a photo later), heading to the bar owned by the hotel with him, and then meeting A LOT of other people. The guest house I am staying in has another 2 guest houses in the local area, so it opened a bar so that everyone could meet and get to know one another. After Jan and I had been there for 10 minutes, the entire population of guests from each hotel managed to find their way to the bar, it was packed. within an hour I had managed to meet 2 Aussies, 3 Canadians, 4 Americans, 1 New Zealander, and 3 people from the UK- within an 1.5 hours a group of 10 of us had left the bar and was heading towards a Karaoke booth- let the fun begin. It was great! Though no offence to some of my Karaoke partners in crime- you can't sing....no hard feelings. Ladies and gentlemen, you may think that $27 all the alcohol you can drink, all the ice cream you can eat, and all the Karaoke you can sing go hand in hand, but don't believe the myth- especially the alcohol one- you are bringing pain upon the nations with your drunken slur!!! The next time I looked at my watch, it was 2:30am- I had now officially been awake for 24 hours- I hadn't realised because I had changed over to Japanese time- I needed a bed. I promptly paid and left the others at 3am, many of them stayed on until 4am- at least I was able to pick myself up out of bed at 7am. More stories (and photos) to come- sorry if this post was a little long and boring, I just wanted to fill you in before it was too late.

Take care,

Jieshi