The Eagle Is In The Air

As I speak, my brother is probably watching movies, my dad is probably looking out the window, and my heavily sedated mother is hopefully not freaking out, as my family climbs to a cruising altitude of about 42,000ft. over the Pacific ocean. By this time tomorrow, I will be in Osaka awaiting the arrivial of their flight. Once they land, I think I will be in for an interesting pair of weeks.

I am looking forward to seeing my family, my brother in particlular, but more than that, I am intrigued to see how they all handle Japan. My family loves to travel but their experience outside of the United States has been sparse, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean are the only destinations that come to mind. When I travel, I usually try to get a pretty good idea of what to expect when I get to my destination, I am not sure if my family has any idea what to expect other than what they have seen from movies. They have all seen "Lost in Translation" and they all hated it, but really that only shows them what Tokyo looks like. I live in the sticks and not many movies shed much illumination on the backwater of Japan. They have seen my blog but I really don't think I have shown too many pictures of my actual town. I think they will be surprised by how green it is here.

The next thing that causes me some anxiety is the fact that my dad and brother will be tricky people to feed. According to my mom, my dad is now pretty handy with chopsticks. This is good. My brother however, won't use them for more than five minutes if at all. When he sits down to eat, he likes to eat and not be challenged by uncooperative eating utensils. My dad is also not a big fan of rice or eggs; both ingredients are used heavily here. My brother does not like fish and the one time he tried sushi, he was not a fan of it. While I am not a fan of our aquatic friends, I have come to terms with the fact that since I live here, there are just times when I have to deal with the taste of fish. Though, I do like sushi, tuna especially. My mom is really the only one of the trio that I am sure won't starve. My dad and my brother may develope an intimate relationship with one of the three McDonalds in town. Ugh.

Lastly, all of them will be staying in my apartment with me. Yeah. This apartment is spacious when I am the only one occupying it. It becomes a tad cramped when two guests stay the night with me. I am not sure how two weeks with four people crashing here is going to play out. I am not worried per se but I think entertaining times will ensue from the tight conditions. For example, my bathroom is small when I am in there, there is no way two people can share it unless one of them is in the shower at the same time.

All in all, I think it will be a lot of fun to have them here and to show them my life now. I have warned them that their vacation will be in no way a relaxing one. I have two weeks to show them Japan and that makes for a lot of train riding and sight seeing. They want to see Tokyo, we will be there are a couple of days. They want to see Osaka, we will be there. I am going to take them to Kyoto at least once for sight seeing and maybe once more for shopping. They will see the seaside city of Kobe and the resort town of Miyazu. They will see Himeji Castle and Fukuchiyama Castle. I hope they will see Mt. Fuji but can't guarantee that. All in all, they will see more of Japan in two weeks than most Japanese people see in two years.

I may post rice paddy pics today because I am not sure if I will have time tomorrow. Other than that, I will post more once my family gets here and I can gauge their reactions to all of this. I am preparing for two pretty odd but pretty good weeks to come.