6/21 Honolulu to Sendai

It's about 11:30 at night, and I'm finally ready to head to bed. It's been a long day, but everyone has been positive and upbeat despite spending over 14 hours in an airport or on a plane. The transfer from an international to domestic flight went without a hitch. The funniest part about it was standing in the foreign visitors immigration line with a Japanese couple. An older Japanese male worker was helping all the visitors in English to make sure their embarkation cards were filled out properly. After helping Logan, he asked the couple (in English) to see their cards. Neither of them had one so he asked them to step around and get one at a nearby counter (also in English). The couple didn't understand him so he hesitated and asked if they were Japanese (in Japanese). They said they were and he confirmed that they were citizens then told them they were standing in the wrong line. As they walked away, he said (in English), "Stupid Japanese."

The 3+ hour wait in Narita was probably the hardest to bear. It's probably not because of the length of the wait, but rather that we were so close to our destination, but couldn't do anything to get closer. Luckily there was some free Wi-Fi. The domestic terminal was not the main domestic terminal so it had a very small gift shop and food counter where some of us sampled some basic Japanese food.

The flight to Sendai was short and we eagerly greeted our host, Takahashi-san, through the glass windows before we retrieved our luggage. We took our obligatory group picture and headed to the train platform to finish the last leg of today's journey.

Takahashi-san helped us check in to the hotel close to 9:00pm. We let our tired host go home to get some rest for tomorrow and dropped off our bags. The six of us wandered around to find a nearby restaurant to placate our hunger that was not satisfied by the limited food choices at the only kiosk in the domestic terminal. After a bit of indecision, I suggested that we stop at Matsuya, a Japanese chain restaurant that specialized in gyudon and other beef dishes. Naturally we stopped to say hi to "conbini-chan" (our nickname for the beloved convenience stores in Japan). The long day of travel was made all worthwhile seeing Takahashi-san and eating ice cream just outside a conbini.