Well it's been a while since many of you have heard from me so let me start from the beginning. I left for Taiwan on January 21st from St. Louis. We flew to Chicago and then on to Tokyo where we stayed for approximately a week. Jessie's cousin, Cindy lives and studies at a University in Tokyo and was kind enough to let us crash at her incredibly small apartment. It's small yet everything is quite efficient and space saving accessories are rather inventive in Japan. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.
These are a few aerial shots I took between in flight movies.
Canada
Alaska
So when we arrived in Japan Cindy was at the airport to greet us and help us get to her apartment. Little did I know at that moment how far she had traveled to pick us up. I thought we landed in Tokyo, well we did but not really. So after 12+ hours in flight to Japan we then had to get on the MRT with several pieces of large luggage between the two of us. The MRT from Narita to Tokyo took a considerable amount of time. I want to say just under 2 hours but I can't remember exactly. Once we got into Tokyo we then took the subways with a few transfers to get to the area withn Tokyo where Cindy's apartment is. It's rather difficult to naviagate the subways with thousands of people running every which way, running into you without a second glance. Up and down escalators and through rushing crowds we dragged our luggage. No to mention it was really cold and a light rain was falling.
So at this point I should interrupt with a rather humorous story, well humorous to some maybe, but I have yet to move on and allow this situation to be humorous, hopefully in time it will prove to be that. So the night before leaving for Taiwan I did what I consider rather normal, I started packing. Really, it wasn't a big deal and worked out quite nicely for me. (Besides the fact that I didn't sleep that night but I kept telling myself that I could sleep on the plane.) However, my partner in crime didn't weight in on the fact that her suitcase might be, say overweight. So at 4:30am she came over to my house with her luggage and I wanted to make sure that we wouldn't have to donate any of her things to the black hole aka my parents garage. We had originally decided that we would each take only one large suitcase and one carry-on because of our visit to Tokyo. Mind you we had already shipped some of our things to Taiwan. Well to make this story move along Jessie ended up needing to bring another suitcase. I had an extra piece from my luggage set (this is an important detail) and we distributed the extra weight into the additional suitcase. Again this is roughly one hour before we need to leave so I'm sweating a litte at this point. Everything went fine and we got to Tokyo no problems. I grabbed my bag and my carry-on and Jessie grabbed hers. We got to her cousin's apartment and dropped off our things and went and got dinner with a few of Cindy's friends. I get back to the apartment and I'm standing in the middle of this 5 foot wide apartment looking at the suitcases strewed across the floor and I begin to count...1,2,3,4,.... I must have miss counted let me count again 1,2,3,4,................ ummmmmm Jessie didn't we have 5 suitcases. I had 2 and you had 3 right? Where is your third suitcase? Ha......haaa and now I'm crying until I realize that the suitcase I grabbed was her third suitcase, not my large second suitcase with ALL of my clothes and possessions in it. Now I'm sobbing! With all the last minute luggage shuffle and adding another suitcase to the mix (which looked just like mine) I forgot that we had added another bag that matched my black Samsonite set. Fortunately for me I knew well enough to pack a few changes of clothes in my carry-on, so yes, I'm wearing the same clothes in all of my pictures while in Japan and no they weren't dirty, I washed them every other night. Cindy called the airport the next day and gave them the luggage number and I was luckily reunited with all of my clothes (in the whole world) once we arrived in Taipei the following week. I still have a hard time laughing about this but maybe in 10 years it will be funny. Hopefully you find it rather amusing though.
So at this point I should interrupt with a rather humorous story, well humorous to some maybe, but I have yet to move on and allow this situation to be humorous, hopefully in time it will prove to be that. So the night before leaving for Taiwan I did what I consider rather normal, I started packing. Really, it wasn't a big deal and worked out quite nicely for me. (Besides the fact that I didn't sleep that night but I kept telling myself that I could sleep on the plane.) However, my partner in crime didn't weight in on the fact that her suitcase might be, say overweight. So at 4:30am she came over to my house with her luggage and I wanted to make sure that we wouldn't have to donate any of her things to the black hole aka my parents garage. We had originally decided that we would each take only one large suitcase and one carry-on because of our visit to Tokyo. Mind you we had already shipped some of our things to Taiwan. Well to make this story move along Jessie ended up needing to bring another suitcase. I had an extra piece from my luggage set (this is an important detail) and we distributed the extra weight into the additional suitcase. Again this is roughly one hour before we need to leave so I'm sweating a litte at this point. Everything went fine and we got to Tokyo no problems. I grabbed my bag and my carry-on and Jessie grabbed hers. We got to her cousin's apartment and dropped off our things and went and got dinner with a few of Cindy's friends. I get back to the apartment and I'm standing in the middle of this 5 foot wide apartment looking at the suitcases strewed across the floor and I begin to count...1,2,3,4,.... I must have miss counted let me count again 1,2,3,4,................ ummmmmm Jessie didn't we have 5 suitcases. I had 2 and you had 3 right? Where is your third suitcase? Ha......haaa and now I'm crying until I realize that the suitcase I grabbed was her third suitcase, not my large second suitcase with ALL of my clothes and possessions in it. Now I'm sobbing! With all the last minute luggage shuffle and adding another suitcase to the mix (which looked just like mine) I forgot that we had added another bag that matched my black Samsonite set. Fortunately for me I knew well enough to pack a few changes of clothes in my carry-on, so yes, I'm wearing the same clothes in all of my pictures while in Japan and no they weren't dirty, I washed them every other night. Cindy called the airport the next day and gave them the luggage number and I was luckily reunited with all of my clothes (in the whole world) once we arrived in Taipei the following week. I still have a hard time laughing about this but maybe in 10 years it will be funny. Hopefully you find it rather amusing though.
MRT Japan (before I realized I didn't have my suitcase *read above*)
Jessie, Cindy, and I in the subway in Tokyo
