Hello from Seattle

Hi. How are you doing? I'm in Seattle now and writing blog at the cafe called ZOKA CAFE sitting with Lee-sensei at the same table. We are doing OK.

We, Lee-sensei, Yuto and me, left from Sendai at about 9:00 a.m. for Tokyo. And we arrived at Tokyo station at about 11:30. Then, we waited for thirty minutes to get on Narita Express which took us to the Narita airport. It took for about thirty minutes to the airport.

There, our baggages were inspected if we had a illigal things in a suitcase by the staff at the airport. To my surprise, I was asked to stop for checking my suitcase because I was looked weird! And a elderly man started to open it and searched if there were any dangerous things to bring to the airplane. I could not believe my eyes because I had no such things in my suitcase. And there were absolutely no such things in it. The staff found out it after five minutes.

After that, we could get our "boarding pass" from the machine and handed our suitcase to the staff. We should hand a suitcase unlocked. For getting boarding pass, we had to simply hold our passports over a scanner. And then, we could get "boarding pass" from the machine. It was very easy to use. Because the elderly woman behind us, however, did not know how to use it, Yuto showed her how to get "boarding pass." After that, we changed money from yen to dollor at Mizuho Ginko.

By the way, our airplane was Northwest Airlines. My seat was "31-D". Lee-sensei and Yuto sat far away from me. Chinese man was sitting to my right side. And Korean man was sitting to the left side. I could know where they came from because Chinese man was talking Chinese with his wife and Korean man was reaing the book written in Korean and was speaking to the air-hostess he is Korean. It's annoying that the Chinese reclined on my right side of shoulder when he was sleeping. I just had been waiting the timing when he changed his sleeping position.
It took nine and half hours to get to San Feancisco. It was little sad that I could not see the view of a city in San Francisco from the airplane because I sat in the middle seat. At the San Francisco airport, we spent our time waiting to get on the Alaska airplane. We did not go out of the airport. We had a cup of coffee, good tasted, there. Yuto fell asleep onto the chair while reading the book. Lee-sensei and I were talking about the woman behind us. Finally, the Alaska airplane took off at 2:00 p.m.

Alaska airplane is a little smaller than that of Northwest. And three seats are placed on right and left side. I had a cup of orange juice in the plane. Since I could sit close to a window, I enjoyed seeing the view above the city of Seattle. Actually, I was sleeping almost one and half hours on the plane.

We arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International airport at around 3:30 p.m. While we were waiting for taking back our baggages, A father whose son was Yuto's roommate last summer came to pick him up. As for Lee-sensei and I, Lee-sensei's friend, Charlas, came to pick us up and gave us a ride to his house. So now, we are staying at his house which is close to Green Lake. (http://www.cityofseattle.net/parks/parkspaces/greenlak.htm This website is sbout Green Lake)
The room is very comfortable to live and sleep. I appreciate him offering his room.

However, we are looking for a house we can stay at. Though I will leave for the dorm on 18 July, Lee-sensei will live a house with the other person after I move to the dorm. She is going to share a house with two or four people they are really new to her. I heared that it is common here to share one house with four or five men or women to live for paying law price. I hope we will be living on a new house tomorrow.

Thank you FUJIYAMA members writing me a message card and some of you who sent me an email before I left for Seattle!!

Misaki