I’ve been back in Japan for about a week and a half; I guess I should give a quick summary of what else I did in the US to wrap that all up blog-wise. I also need to post pictures all over the place (here, Facebook, mixi, your mom’s house). I’ll probably do it tomorrow.

So I already wrote a bit when I was in St. Louis. In general, it was just a lot of hanging out with the family since Al came in for the weekend, and seeing friends. A great time. I thought for some reason that all kinds of things would be different when I went home, but it was quite the opposite. Actually, things had changed a lot less than I had imagined. It was almost as if I had never left. I got to watch a decent amount of American TV too. Most of it is terrible, yes, but it’s not as terrible as Japanese TV. I watched Heroes for the first time on actual broadcast, and my brother Joe got me hooked on The Office with Steve Carell. What a great show. Shopping was a good experience too, but just because I love walking around Target or Wal-Mart. Everything in one spot! Japanese stores don’t really have that down as well. Oh, and there was one other major thing that was enjoyable about going back to America…

Hell. Yes.

It’s not like food in Japan is bad, but there are just some things that seem to be impossible for chefs here to get right. Nothing beats real St. Louis style pizza, and certainly not any Japanese pizza. Let’s see, what else… Steak, Cecil Whitakers, Jack in the Box, Mexican food, IHOP, Denny’s, Penn Station, White Castle – all were eaten by me during my vacation. And of course home cooking. My Dad decided to make a full turkey dinner on the Saturday I was there, so missing Thanksgiving in America again won’t be such a big deal.

After spending just over a week at home, I went to LA for a few days to hang out with friends. It’s strange how the majority of my close friends from college now either live in California or Japan. I stayed at Joey and Kyle’s new place, which puts my apartment in Chiba to utter shame just because of how huge their place was. Went to a sweet comedy show, ate more good food, went to happy hour, saw friends, walked to a funky mall with random walkways going everywhere, and went to a cool Oktoberfest-type party at the Alpine Village. Oh yeah, and just for future reference, if you’ve only got 4 guys, reserving a table and getting an entire liter of alcohol that no one wants to drink isn’t such a great idea. *cough*PAT*cough* Haha.

Saturday morning, had breakfast at IHOP with Kyle and Ashley, then went to the airport. My flight was scheduled to leave at 2:30, so getting there at 12:15ish I figured I was golden. Wrong. There was a typhoon in Japan so the outgoing flights had been delayed. My flight on Singapore Air had to wait for the plane from Tokyo to arrive, so I ended up getting delayed like 3 or 4 hours. Really not that bad, but by the time I got to Narita and then back to my apartment it was around 11 or 12PM and I was beyond exhausted. But America was a great vacation, and hopefully I’ll go back again soon. Maybe Christmas.