I boarded a loooong flight from San Francisco to Osaka/Kansai Japan, and then on to Fukuoka. 11 hours, my longest flight ever. This is a big city of 1.5 million on the southernmost island of Japan, Kyushu. At the time I remember thinking that it was kind of the Japanese version of Miami. Although, at the time I had never been to Miami so what did I know.Japan is some serious culture shock for someone who hasn't traveled much. Lots of lights, and traffic, and the signs are in indecipherable characters.
It was hot and rainy most days, but I got to visit some nice beaches.
I was in Fukuoka for the World University Games. I was running the Steeple, and this was my second US team, my first being only the week before when I was in England! Lots of travel this month.I stayed in the well equipped athletes village with the rest of the team. The Japanese put on a great meet. They had lots of cultural events, taiko drumming, sumo exhibitions, origami. Just kidding on the last one. My friends Dan and Scott and I met the three Japanese girls pictured above and hung out with them one day. They invited us back to the apartment that one of them lived in with her family. It was neat to see how people live in Japan. The place had all the same amenities that any American apartment would have, except it was really, really small. The dining room table was only a foot off the ground, and everyone sat on the floor on mats. The whole two bedroom apartment couldn't have been more than 400 square feet. These were not poor people, this is just the tightly packed lifestyle the Japanese accept. Across from the apartment was a beautiful, serene Buddhist shrine in a small park. It didn't seem like a bad life, just a life in miniature.
