Japan... finally!

Okay, so it is officially time for my update on my Japan trip. But unfortunately, I deemed packing much more important than posting to my blog and I have put it off until 9:45pm. You will see why this could be a problem in a second.

So tomorrow I leave for Japan with the Husky Marching Band. There are about 100 people going altogether, out of a band that marches 240 on the field. Why are we going to Japan you may ask? Because the music programs at UW have a connection to schools over there. They have been here some and the UW wind ensemble has gone over to Japan before, but never the marching band, so this is a new and cool thing. We are marching in two parades, doing a field show, doing a homestay in a little Japanese fishing village, touring around to schools and hosting a combined concert.

Now this is why I should be in bed: we leave UW tomorrow at 4:30am, which means I am setting my alarm clock for 3:15am. Oi! But I love you guys enough to post when I said that I would. I then catch a 6:25am flight to San Fran, and then take a noon flight to Japan. The flight is going to be 11 hours and 30 minutes long. I looked today =). I don't mind flying, but I have never been on a plane that long, so I am not too sure about this. I don't even like CAR rides that are that long, and you can at least look out the window. Oh well... I will watch their little movies, or *sigh* do catch up on the homework I am missing. We will arrive in Osaka at 4:15pm on Friday. We will have a little bit of a chance to recuperate, and then we jump right into our schedule. We are there a week and come home on Thursday, October 13. And then I turn right around to leave for the UW vs. UO game in Eugene.

Apparently the people in Japan are really, really excited about us coming. I can't seem to think that we are anything that special, but they are very excited. I think part of it may be the culture, but just a guess. They have billboards up all over Osaka with a picture of the logo W and our Husky dog, Spirit. And last night Brad told us that the people in the town where we are doing our homestays had a meeting about us coming that went all night. He told us that we are going to be treated like rockstars. I will let you know if that happens or not =). So while everyone is excited about us coming, we do have a responsibility to behave and not make them hate Americans. Some funny things that I have noticed so far, they have interesting terms when it comes to translation. For instance, they call our uniforms our "performance costumes" and they call the field show a "marching exhibition." Apparently this "marching exhibition" is going to be broadcast all over Japan. Scary stuff. Oh yah, 39 of our guys are going to be staying in a Buddhist temple for their homestay. Now that is scary =).

Anyway, on to something that doesn't have a thing to do with Japan. When I bought my car about a month ago, I went and bought a new stereo and an iPod interface. I love my stereo, but unfortunately, it took me until yesterday to finally use my iPod interface. I could have kicked myself!! I should have used it much sooner. It is really nifty, all you have to do is hook up your iPod to the cable and then you can access all of the albums/songs/artists on your iPod. It spells out on the stereo screen who it is you are listening to and what song and all that jazz. I like it because now I don't have to make sure that I have the CD that I want to listen to handy as long as I have my iPod. I can also change albums way easier than if I were to have to change the actual CD. And it charges my iPod. How cool is that?!? Goodnight!