So, the last couple of days, in a nutshell: madness.

Yesterday I was an extremely busy guy and did a whole lot of running around. I got a bit of a late, groggy start, doing some money juggling before I started shifting all of my stuff downstairs, clearing out the upstairs room of everything I’d put in there. Given that I’d been more or less living out of my suitcases, this wasn’t too hard. I called the computer shop and confirmed that I could pick up my laptop this afternoon. Not all of the issues I’d highlighted have been fixed, but at this point it’s just ridiculous – the day before I leave the country? Come on.

Anyway, after that I talked to NZQA on the phone, finding out what kind of documentation I’m going to need to sort out with regards to my student loan so they don’t start charging me tons of interest. Then began the fun job of sorting all of my clothes and other crap, trying to fit everything into my suitcases. I’m thinking I should have just left more stuff in the US, that would have made things so much easier.

After doing that for a while, I went into town and had coffee with Mickey, who I hadn’t seen in a few years. Somewhat ironically, he’s actually based out of New York now, although we never managed to get together for anything while I was over in the US. Note to self: try to get up to NYC at some point next time I’m in the US for a while. It was good having a catch-up with him, although in the end it did still feel a bit brief – we’re both busy I guess. Hopefully I’ll see him again sooner rather than later, but with this whole Japan thing I’m doing, who knows when I’m going to be seeing all the people around the world I know next!

From there it was a bit of running about: pick up my laptop case for my new laptop, go pick up my old laptop, then head back to Dad’s place to get back to it. Grandma and Grandad stopped over briefly, it was good to see them one more time before I left the country – I made sure to see a whole lot of them while I was in NZ this time around, so it was a nice little moment of send off, I guess. ^^

After that I talked to Anastasia online briefly, before going over my documents and realising that the luggage restriction is, in fact, 20kg total, not for each of two bags, which is the usual. Holy crap. This involved a complete re-pack of my luggage, including an entire suitcase worth of stuff to send back to Anastasia and I’s place in Florida. I needed to really figure out what was my bare minimum of stuff to take! There were also a few things which I will hopefully get mailed to me here in Japan as well.

After/during all of this repacking, Rach showed up and brought me dinner (pizza), which was awesome. She stuck around to help me out and chat a bit, then give me a lift over to Dace’s place later when I was done, which was quite a bit later than I was expecting… stupid having to repack everything. Ugh, airlines. Anyway, Dace had a bed set up for me and everything, and came down for a short chat before crashing out in his room. I didn’t actually get any sleep at all that night, so I spent some time cleaning up Angelina instead. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the network to play nice, so there was some stuff left on the hard drive… hopefully at some point I’ll be able to retrieve those files or wipe them off properly, although I have no idea when the hell that’s going to be.

So, horrifically early in the morning (as is usual for flights out of NZ, sigh) my brother and I set out for the airport. I’m soemwhat glad that no one buggered themselves getting up that early in the morning to come see me off, I would have felt bad if they had. I got all my baggage checked properly and so on, then headed over to the waiting area with the other Monbugakusho scholars from Canterbury. Coincidentally, my mate Will from Canterbury was also there. He’s coming over to Japan on exchange to a university in Saitama (which is just north of Tokyo) for a year, so that should be another friendly face that I’ll be able to see semi-regularly. Anyway, turns out that the other Monbusho scholars and I are all stuck next to each other all the way to Japan – so off we went. First up to Auckland, remarkably short and uneventful, as that flight always is. The flight to Japan was moderately unpleasant – I didn’t sleep at all when I thought I was going to, and the Air NZ food continues to hate me, giving me an upset stomach. In the end I watched a few movies: Bee Movie (pretty funny, but glad I didn’t go to the cinema for it), Alvin and the Chipmunks (ditto) and No Country for Old Men (although I missed the last three minutes, on the whole I was mostly underwhelmed by this… not for any particular reason, it just didn’t really do it for me).

Arrival in Japan involved a fair amount of waiting in line for customs, but I’m so used to doing that for going to the US that it’s just become another one of the necessary evils of travel. I long for a world where time spent in airports has nothing to do with security or waiting for someone to briefly look at your passport before waving you through. I didn’t have any issues with the immigration officer either, everything just went smoothly and then I was through. I teamed up with Stefan, one of the other scholars, at this point because he actually knew what he was doing – he’s lived in Japan before and is pretty fluent in Japanese as well. We stopped at a convenience store in the airport for some water, snacks (onigiri!) and some stuff to settle my stomach. Then it was on to the trains, crammed on with our luggage… I can tell you, lugging those up and down stairs in train stations when we needed to change trains was not pleasant. Once we got to the last station, we ended up walking around a bit and repeatedly asking directions to the dorm… at this point it’s in the evening in Japan, so it’s not as simple as grabbing a passing student. Once more I feel very lucky to have had Stefan with me at this point – he was able to ask for directions in Japanese. We eventually got to the dorm and checked in, although the people at the office weren’t terribly happy with either of us for checking in so late in the day… apparently we were supposed to check in earlier, despite having the timing for all of that arranged for us. Anyway, sorted. A quick run to the local convenience store for some dinner later, then I was ready to crash.

With the lack of sleep the night before and no sleep on the plane, this has been one hell of an April Fools’ Day. Despite the day, I have come to realise this is not a joke: I’m actually, finally here.