Abroad

As the plane came closer to Japan, daylight started to seep beneath the cracks of the windows. Soon the stewardess began patrolling the aisles with the breakfast food carts. Duo started to wake up from the sleep he hadn't even realized he had fallen into. The soft voice of the stewardess asking passengers in English and Japanese if they wanted juice or coffee began to rouse everyone.

Duo often complained that airplane food was an oxymoron. After the disappointing display of soggy eggs and crusty sausage, his felt a worse off for eating it. Duo stretched his legs and climbed out of his seat in search for his toothbrush. Closing the overhead compartment, Duo made his way back to the bathroom in order to fight off his bad sleep breath.

Reaching the bathroom, he was a little shocked to see his reflection. Dark circles had started to form underneath his eyes and hair was sticking out in every direction from his braid. After a quick brush of his teeth, splashing some water on his face and re-braiding his hair, Duo made is way back to his seat. 'Damn,' he thought to himself, 'maybe I could try to catch a little more sleep. I feel like shit.' Not only was he stiff from the uncomfortable position that he had slept in, but also being stuck in the cabin so long was starting to do wacky things to his body. The headache, he figured, was from the lack of sleep, but the slight bloating he felt had to be from the compressed cabin air. 'Can't wait to get off this forsaken flying tin can,' he thought with a mental groan and tried to fall back asleep.

He was lucky to get another hour of sleep, but it didn't help much. Checking the monitor of one of the many small TVs that littered the cabin, he saw that their landing time was scheduled in another hour and a half. Making light conversation with Hilde and writing in travel journal for class made the next 45 minutes pass rather quickly.

He heard from on of the boys in front him telling is row partner, "Lookit that! Damn, that is a lot of mountains." Hilde, who had also heard the conversation opened the window covering to see what they could see. Rising out of the clouds, brown craggy peaks greeted them. The pilot, who was most likely had seen this sight a hundred times came on over the intercom. "This is your pilot speaking. We are beginning our flight over Japan. If you look out of your window, you will be able to see a few of the many mountains of Japan. People who are on the left side of the plane, when we begin to make our turn, you will have the possibility of see Mount Fuji." Duo, who currently inhabited the right side of the plane sighed. It would be neat to see Mount Fuji, but he wasn't going to rush to the other side of the plane to try to see it. He had a moment of an awful vision that everyone on the plane would run to the left side causing the plane to being to tilt to the left and sending the plane into three-sixty belly rolls until it would spin out of control. Smirking to himself at the ridiculous thought, he figured there would be plenty of time during the next six months to go to Tokyo and see it better.

Finally he began to feel the plane descending and saw the seat belt light come on overhead. They were soon going to be landing. Smiling, he fastened the seat belt and looked back out the window. Outside he could see nothing because they had just descended into the clouds, but when the clouds broke he could finally see Japan. Narrow roads stretched out in all directions winding their way through the landscape. Buildings, forests, and farming plots of land were spread out as far as he could see. As they got closer to the ground, Duo could see houses now. Vibrant blues, reds, and greens made up the rooftops of the houses. Duo blinked, and then blinked again. He had never seen roofs in those colors before, but the roofs in Japan were made of a different kind of material than the shingles that most Americans used on their houses. His musings were cut short when the airplane began to touch ground. Bumping the ground twice, they finally got all wheels safely on the ground and slowed down as they pulled off the runway and stopped at their gate. The pilot came over the intercom one last time, "This is your pilot. Thank you for flying with Northwestern and welcome to Japan."