I have arrived in Japan. After twelve hours aboard a plane from Detroit to Nagoya, fifteen time zones, some 6000 miles over four countries (U.S., Canada, Russia, Japan), an International Date Line, Yuka and I landed at Nagoya's brand new Centrair Airport (http://www.centrair.jp/en/index.html) at around 6:30 p.m. local time (there's no Daylight Saving Time here). The airport is built on an artificial island in Nagoya-Ko (Nagoya Bay) so landing was a bit like on an aircraft carrier.

So far we've been in Japan about four days. We are staying at Yuka's dad's house and have been enjoying the sights of Nagoya. I will be here until 23 June and hope to keep this weblog fairly up-to-date. On this trip I also intend to visit Yokohama, Motomiya-machi, Sagae-shi, and Kyoto, but who knows where I may end up.

So far, after the airport, we went to eat nizakana (pan-cooked fish[?]). Yuka says it's called "Sugi-something." Her father and I had a little too much sake, that's all I know.

The next day, we went to visit Yuka's mother and grandmother in Sakae, the downtown district of Nagoya. We went to Osu, an area named after the Buddhist temple built there in the 1600s, now full of shops & restaurants & many people. The temple is still there and at 6:00 p.m. a wall opens up and a robotic samurai dancer unsheathes his sword to strange music. Hopefully I will get a video of this and post it. Yuka & her mom went to DoCoMo to set up Yuka's cellphone, so I had tried to have a nice conversation with Yuka's grandmother in Japanese. It was a very pleasant conversation, but lacking in depth since our knowledge of the other's language is severely limited.

Yesterday, I woke at 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. due to jetlag (and probably some excitement mixed in there). Yuka got up around that time too, so we decided to take her dog Brad (black Lab) for a walk to nearby Nittaiji temple. We discovered that a monthly market was going to be held that day, so I came back a couple of hours later while Yuka was getting her hair cut.

The market was packed. There were people selling the strangest things, from preserved vegetables slathered in miso paste (tsukemono) to every kind of dried fish next to burning incense (to keep the flies away) to wooden sandals for sale to piles of multicolored yarn. I took a lot of pictures and smelled ten thousand smells. Ten thousand voices kept saying "Iraisshaimase" (loosely translated: welcome, can I help you?). All of this under a massive five-story pagoda and the large gate of the temple entrance. Spectacular.

We met Yuka's friends downtown in Sakae, went to eat some Italian food made by Japanese (not bad) and went to a large inter-collegiate "Campus Paradise" outdoor festival...dancing college students, bands, food stalls, and people handing out fliers to me that I couldn't read.

After that, we got some groceries. Going to supermarkets in other countries is always a very interesting activity. I didn't recognize most of the items there and some of the produce was very different from the US--short, fat carrots, tiny eggplants, huge daikons...and many things that I would question as being truly edible. By this time (9:00 p.m.) the jetlag was a force too strong to resist and I fell asleep until five this morning.

Right now I am at the world headquarters of Chuuobussan, Yuka's dad's company. Actually, it's just a small office, but I thought he might appreciate the endorsement. Tonight we're eating my favorite Japanese food (possibly my favorite food in the world)...okonomiyaki. It's kind of like a pizza or a pancake in shape and that its base is made from dough, but the similarity ends there. The toppings include cabbage and then anything else you want to put on it ("okonomi" means "as you like it") from squid to octopus to dried fish skin to who knows what else I'm ingesting.

More to follow when I get to a computer next.