The Flight Over

Hello, everybody, and welcome to my stories of my journey to Japan. It is going to start off slow as I acquaint myself with others and the area around me, but don't worry. It will take off.
Speaking of taking off, let me talk about the twenty hours I spent in airports and planes. On Friday the 23, I said my farewells to those who came with me to the airport, my sister and dad, went through the irritating process that is airport security, and, after an hour of waiting and a bagel with cream-cheese, boarded for the first leg of my trip, a short hour plus flight to Detroit. Once I disembarked, I had forty-two minutes to dash over to the gate of the next plane, but not before deciding to stop to pick up one of those neck pillows i saw others wearing. I thought it would prove useful (It didn't).
The second flight was five hours long and it took me to Seattle, a city I would've loved to check out, but didn't have the time to do so. I spent the first thirty-minutes reading my copy of Game of Thrones, tired of it and went to try to something on the television screen in-front of me. I failed in that, but my efforts were noticed by the man to my right. He was from Virginia, originally born in an Italian colony somewhere in Africa (I apologize, I cannot remember where) and for an hour we conversed about a number of things briefly, politics, school, language, religion and food. Pizza, we agreed, was the best bread-based food either of us had so far tasted.
Now let me say this about planes: I've come to detest extended flight. No matter your medium of travel, you are forced to remain sedentary, be it plane, train or automobile; but at least the latter options give you somewhere to move about. With planes, its either up to the bathroom or stay seated. It's not like the plane can pull over somewhere so you can get out to stretch. It was the second flight where I started on the path of contempt. Two hours or so in, and I grew sore from sitting down. The seats were far from pillowy, and I was really beginning to dread spending eleven hours aboard the next flight. I slept or picked up my book again for the remainder.
In Seattle, I had the time needed to grab a quick bite, a grilled chicken sandwich which was chewier than I would have liked, then went aboard my last plane. I don't have much to say about the final flight. My neighbor was an old Japanese woman, so I barely even considered talking with her. Instead, I spent most of my time catching up on movies. I saw Ironman 3, the best of the three in my opinion, Louie C.K's latest HBO special and Goodfellas. Otherwise, it was spent attempting sleep, reading or eating. I was served a dinner and breakfast during it, a frozen dinner tray of katsudon pork and an egg and cheese sandwich. Due to my meal in the airport, I felt stuffed after dinner was finished.
It was on this last flight, somewhere between Louie and an attempt at a nap, that I started to think of what lay ahead of me. I knew what was behind me, the routine and the comfort in it, but in front of me, what was there? I was leaping into something I had never truly contemplated before, something novel and unknown. It was strange to me; never before did I deal with anything truly alien to me and yet now here was a real foreign land that I now had no choice but to go to. A realm of opportunity and discovery was laid before me and all that was needed was the will to take it for all it was worth. And so I landed in Osaka airport with this thought embedded in my head. I have the desire to explore, to see what the Land of the Rising Sun held, and I am eager to sink my teeth into all that it has to offer.