Travel day

by Trent Herzog

Second day of our team’s trip, Friday and Saturday

We traveled for fifteen hours but also lost a day because of the time zones.  We took two planes, one to Houston Texas and the second one to Japan. We woke up at 3:30 in the morning, so this is the third day that I’ve gotten very little sleep. My whole schedule is kind of messed up right now with the odd hours.

After we took the two planes and arrived in Japan, we had Mr. Zirkel pick us up. We then took a couple trains and had Mr. Zirkel lead us to his home. We had dinner with Mr. Zirkel, his wife and Holly, who is a student that’s learning the Japanese language at a university and Tokyo and is staying with us in the Zirkel"s home. Since the Zirkel are a host family, they might have several groups with different objectives staying in their house at the same time.

Some interesting stuff happened today. On the first plane, I sat next to a girl who was a student at the University of Kentucky and was taking a trip to Ecuador. We talked for a little bit, but I was so tired that I fell asleep on the girl’s shoulder on accident, but Mr. Waggoner grabbed my head and pulled me off of her.

Some other screwy stuff happened with me. I was the only one to open a window when everybody was trying to sleep, because it wasn’t dark out, but it was supposed to be night. I also bought a couple weasel balls from a store at Houston’s airport, one for Calico, my cat, to play with and one for my family and I to keep intact in case Calico destroys hers.

When we arrived at Japan, I discovered a couple interesting things about their culture. First, they had several anime advertisements and references. I saw the symbol for One Piece on a guy’s backpack in Tokyo’s airport. There was an advertisement for Gantz in the train we rode on. Also, there were a couple posters for Yugioh 5Ds on the walls of buildings that I saw when we rode on the train.

We almost lost Crum when we got on the second train. The door closed before he could get on, and we left him behind. However, Mr. Zirkel , who is the guy we’re staying with, went back and got him. Crum fortunately had the presence of mind to stay where he was instead of trying to look for us, which would have made matters worse. Because of our incident with Crum, Mr. Zirkel developed a plan in case one of us gets left behind while trying to get on the train or subway again. Either the person left behind will stay where they are or they will go to the next train stop, because Mr. Zirkel knows where that is.

Mr. Zurcel’s idea with the trains and subways could be really useful in the future…

We had dinner with Mr. Zirkel, his wife and Holly, who is a new missionary staying with the Zirkel's.  After dinner we got ready for bed.  I think we should be able to sleep.