May 20, 2012
Student Reflections – May 20
By Kim Vu
We are finally in Japan!
Although the flight was non-stop, I found it exhausting & very difficult to sleep. Luckily, Korea Air had plenty of movies to watch with food and beverages available throughout the trip. I watched “Memoirs of a Geisha” on the plane because I thought it would be appropriate for this trip. Though I was tempted to have the salmon or chicken for lunch, I settled on the Korean bibimbap so that I could experience Korean food. I’ve tried some of a friend’s bibimbap before, but this was a whole different experience. We were given a card with instructions on how to prepare the bibimbap, putting the rice into the bigger bowl which had some veggies and ground meat, followed by the chili paste, and then adding the sesame oil before mixing everything up. The man next to me added his soup to the mix when he wasn’t supposed to and he looked very confused when the flight attendant was trying to explain this.
I really liked the flight attendants uniforms—a turquoise colored blouse with tan pants as well as a turquoise tie for their hair. They worked throughout the trip to make sure we got enough drinks and snacks. They were very good with asking me if I needed anything periodically and I really enjoyed how they put different cultural foods on the plane so that guests could try. The flight itself was extremely smooth, though very long and everyone took the whole day’s trip to anticipate finally arriving.
By David Cortes
We had to be at LAX at 7:30 am in order to have enough time to check in and process our information at the airport. After we were done checking in, we had to wait till 10:35 am to start boarding the airplane. Being able to see the airplane we were going to board created excitement because we were actually heading to Japan.
Once we were on the airplane, we began our 11 hour journey to Japan. The plan ride was long and tiring because we had limited space, which made it uncomfortable. Fortunately, we had the opportunity to watch movies on the airplane. It made the plane ride go by smoothly.
Once we arrived at Narita airport, we saw a sign that welcomed us to Japan. That was an exciting moment for all of us because we had reached our destination safely. It was great to see everything in a different language because it meant that we could fully immerse ourselves into the Japanese culture. Furthermore, we lost our nighttime because we crossed the International Date Line.
Our real journey began when we boarded the train in order to head over to Akasaka. It was tiring and a long ride. We had to walk a lot with our luggage all over the train stations, which made it difficult to move around at times. Getting to our hotel was the best part because we were finally able to rest and put our stuff down. It took us more than an hour to actually arrive at our final destination.
