First day in Japan

Max and I landed in Narita airport yesterday in the early afternoon, and my first trip to Japan officially started! It was a relatively comfortable flight with very nice flight attendants, and notably most of them were Japanese, known for the politeness and punctuality. As we cleared immigrations, their emphasis on their good etiquette were demonstrated from directing us to the supposed counters, to their patience in answering our questions even though there was a language barrier. It is very fortunate that Max can converse quite a bit in Japanese. Throughout the whole of yesterday, we got a lot of help from the Japanese as we walked around, and Max put his Japanese to really good use.

The cleanliness and orderliness of Japan was also pretty amazing to me. I just came back from Korea not too long ago and there is a huge contrast. Dirty streets strewn with pamphlets, impatient and reckless drivers, ahjumma and ahjusshis shoving you out of the way should you be blocking them. Japan is like a whole new world, I don’t know how to describe it, it’s just…wow.

The technology in Japan were also demonstrated everywhere, with heated toilet seats and mirrors as well as punctual trains despite the large and complex network. I am excited to see what the institute tours and exhibition have in store for us. Hopefully there are cool stuff other than the TEM and SEM machines we’ve been seeing during the institute tours in Singapore.

Japan has been an eye opener so far. I am looking forward to the next few days of eating, learning and exploring around this amazing country.

-Mavis