well. let me tell you, 13 hours on a plane feels amazing!!!! lol. aside from being sick with a cold and sore throat the first day was amazing!! we got in Narita airport at around 3ish and it took about an hour to get through customs and immigration and get out to the bus. at this point i hadn`t really hit me yet, but i really didn't understand much around me. we took the bus into Tokyo and road the subway around for another good hour trying to find our hotel. After stumbling around in the rain we finally found the sakura hotel. it's a nice hotel and the rooms are pretty standard.
     After getting things put away we decided to go to akihabara which is basically the electronics capital of the world. It was insane. every inch of the district was covered in bright flashing lights and insanely huge signs. we walked around for a good 4 hours and walked into many different stores. The coolest place we visited that day though was club sega. It had 7 different floors with a different type of video game on each floor. fighting, simulation, sports, etc. One thing to be aware of though when walking around in akiba (shortened version of akihabara) is that there is a lot of porn lol. On multiple occasions we walked into these stores unaware of what they were. Most buildings have multiple floors with a different thing sold on each floor. In one of these building we walked around the base floor which was a dvd and manga (Japanese comic) store. We saw a sign that said there was an internet cafe on the fourth floor so we decided to check it out. The second floor turned out to be one of these porn shops and we all quickly turned around after searching for the stairs to the next floor which weren't there. It turns out you had to take the elevator to the fourth floor to bypass all the porn......lol.
    Japanese customs and formalities are also pretty interesting. take for example driving on the left side of the road. most people know that fact, but it also applies to the sidewalks too. After walking into a good 10 people i finally caught on. tax is included in the shown price at stores. This was an awesome finding on my part since i hate having to figure that out before i go up to pay. Also the coins in japan are very useful unlike the ones we have in America. 100 yen is basically 1 dollar. the denominations for coins in japan are 10, 50, 100, and 500. so basically you have 1 dollar and 5 dollar coins which is extremely useful because u can get rid of your change faster. Wearing a mask when your sick is also pretty popular here. I've seen a good 100 people so far wearing masks. Since i am also sick i thought about buying one at the local convenience store, but changed my mind. You can buy anything in a vending machine! it's true. They are everywhere and they are on every street. little toys, coffee, full meals, soda, crazy weird energy drinks, cigarettes, tooth brushs, shaving kits, the list goes on.
    There is probably more to add, but i will do that later on.

~cooper~