"Mr Karachi...?"

I have now arrived in Japan! Unfortunately there is no internet in my dormitory at all, and there won't be for another couple of weeks, so I'm going to try to keep in touch with everybody through the occasional email and maybe facebook during the small bits of free time we get to disappear off to the free computer room in the International Student Office. Even though we have the weekend free, we can't get in because we don't have any student cards yet. Ah well.

For now, this is just a quick hello to let you know that, even if I haven't sent you a message so far (and thank you for sending them all!) I will try and get back to you as soon as I can. Jet-lag is a curious thing, and I'm currently up at some late hour typing this to try and train myself the hard way.

The flight. It ended up lasting around 19 hours, leaving the UK around 2:30pm, arriving at Dubai for 00:20am (UK time 10:30pm), then heading off to Nagoya a couple of hours later on a different plane arriving at around 5pm (UK time 11am). Interestingly, Nagoya Centrair Airport is one of Japan's engineering marvels, having been built entirely at sea, so please read more about it if you have time. Upon arrival I had to submit my fingerprints and have my photo taken, and be sniffer-dogged to death by the cutest drug-addicted canine in the world. After that I had my suitcase taken apart by the security staff, either because I didn't answer fast enough or because they hadn't done it to someone in a while and were getting bored. Once they were convinced I wasn't carrying anything deadly or illegal like raw meat, they let me through where I met up with the NUPACE (Nagoya University Program for ACademic Exchange) and was led by subway and train to the International Ohmeikan, my dormitory for the next 47 weeks.


PS. "Mr Karachi" was the name of some poor gentlemen whom it seemed had escaped from the Dubai airport staff, who themselves were running around shouting his name all over the place trying to recapture him. Bless.