First. THANK YOU GOD. I plugged in my new 10GB iPod (thanks, Craig!) and guess what, it worked with Windows XP! My old 5GB certainly did not, needless to say I was estatic.

I've been hanging out in a lounge not far from our departure gate, doing the fly-on-the-wall-with-an-internet-connection thing. One exciting thing about foreign travel for the 'youngens is an opportunity to play grown-up and partake in various alcoholic beverages. Drinking age in America: 21. Drinking age in Japan: 18. This guy couldn't have been over eighteen. Carrying on about his drinking experiences, questioning if he should wait to get on the flight or finish his beer, talking about drinking beer on the flight, asking the Americans next to him if they knew what "PCS" stood for. You get the picture. I am making a mental note to avoid associating with other Americans like this while in Asia.

I also recorded a video of a quick run-through of a gift shop, check it out. Pretty pointless, but hey it's practically live.

Narita airport is mighty fine. Opened up my laptop and got right on the internet...free! I have a four hour layover here in Tokyo before I transfer to Taipei. Our ten hour flight from San Francisco was uneventful. Thank god.

I can't upload images directly into this weblog yet, so here's a link to Sheena and I hard at work w/ our laptops in the Narita lounge:

http://user1.7host.com/Ulf667/narita_airport.jpg.

Quick Stats on trip so far:

Current local time:
Around 1:00PM I think

Current time my body is operating on:
11:00PM

Hours of sleep last night:
3.5

# of meals I ate on plane
3

# of meals officially offered on flight
2

# of golf courses seen flying into Narita
5

# of baseball stadiums
2

I learned how to barter in Chinese today, so I'm looking forward to hitting the night markets in Taipei tonight.