So, today I just spent a hectic day getting this ready before I leave. I was running around like a chicken with it`s head cut off making sure there weren`t any loose ends that would be way too hard to tie up once away. I did manage to listen to the end of the hockey game although I didn`t see any of it, nice to see us win!!

Looking at my flight time and the bus schedule, I realized that I would have to spend the night in Seattle if I wanted to get to the airport on time. While on the bus ride down I ended up chatting to the guy a couple rows behind me. He was really nice; his Mother lived in Frankfurt and his father lived in New York so he had both US and German citizenship. He ended up tell me about how they have mandatory service once you are done highschool in Germany. You either have to spend 9 months in the army or 10 months doing community service. Since he didn`t feel that the army was for him, he ended taking the service. What he did was work with an organition (I think it was called Train Station Missionaries as it was originally founded by Nuns) that assisted the poor with meals and worked with drug addicts. The experience he said was up and down and it was really hard to see some of those people struggling with addiction and knowing that there was nothing you can do to help them. Talk about a way to grow up quickly.

Anyway, I decided to sleep in a hostel rather than the airport that night as I knew I would probably get little sleep on the plane and stay up pretty late in Japan. Before I went to bed, I went out for a couple drinks with Julian, the guy I met on the bus. By then it was 11 and most of the bars close to the hostel just had last call. So we walked for a couple minutes until we found a place called the Noc-Noc Club. They were playing so loud 80`s music, but it wasn`t that bad of place. When I ended up going to the and asking for what they had on tap, it was weird hearing all the US Beers as opposed to the Vancouver beers I`m used to. About that time I noticed that there were a lot of men sitting in pairs talking with each other. We kinda laughed for a second and then sat back down and ended up chatting for a couple hours.

It`s been less than 6 hours since I left and I`ve already met another traveler. Here`s to hoping this trend continues throughout my Trip :)

Erik, the guy I`m traveling with has a digital camera, so I`ll try to put up pictures when I get a chance.

Cheers,
Drew