Soulja Sojourns: Amman to Dubai to Incheon to...Osaka! I'm here!

My flight to Dubai was quick and uneventful (in a good way). The airport in Dubai was expectedly glitzy and huge. I have met some very interesting creatures along the way! Even before we boarded the flight to Dubai, I'd noticed a cute little family, a mother, father and teenage daughter. They looked Indian but the father was wearing a traditional hatta, even tied correctly with the traditional black camel whip so I assumed they were Jordanian. They were sitting next to me on the plane and the daughter, an 18 year old student from New Delhi was very friendly. She told me they'd been touring Israel and Jordan for vacation and were on to Dubai before returning home to New Delhi. She said the tour guide tied her father's hatta. She is studying poli sci at a university there and just completed her first semester. She told me she would "facebook friend" me. My next two flights--to Korea and then Japan--were with Korean Air. The flight attendants are like beautiful white porcelain dolls with blue breast cancer symbols turned sideways like bows above a tightly-wound, perfectly sleek ivory bun. They wear baby blue accessories and move their limbs like dolls too, bending at the waist and elbow and head at perfect angles. My seatmate to Korea was very interesting: a large black man with many small black tattoos all over his hands and arms. I noticed he was wearing (what I thought was) a Palestinian keffiyeh and remarked on it. I then found out that he's an expat from Fiji who currently trains Afghani citizens as soldiers in Afghanistan. The scarf he was wearing has a slightly different pattern than the keffiyeh and is Afghani. It was extremely interesting to speak with him; he was a friendly man with a laugh too giggly for his imposing exterior. He told me the soldiers come to him mostly speaking no English, poor citizens from the countryside who have never handled a pen in their lives, with the past occupation only of family "survival." In answer to a question about safety and fear, he said the only day he was ever afraid in his line of work was the day his students took their final test to become a soldier. He hinted that soldiers who do not pass have been known to kill their instructors.

The Korean airport felt unfriendly and ritzy. I needed a drugstore but there was only extremely high-end makeup and clothing stores like Louis Vuitton, ect. I spent a couple hours there, exhausted from a night of no sleep. The flight to Japan was just a bit over an hour. My first view of Japan was stunning: Osaka is a wonderful city on the water surrounded by blue mountains. I caught a taxi to my hotel across the water; side note: the taxis here are completely opposite to those in Jordan. Instead of a dusty yellow taxi with a talkative driver, I had a silent, stoic driver in a sleek black taxi. And it's so strange driving on the "wrong" side of the road! My hotel was perfect, although I felt a bit guilty because no one speaks English and sometimes I feel like an annoyance (although the staff is so accommodating). Service is amazing here in Japan so far; the people are kind and precise and efficient. Everyone counts back change for you and bows after any transaction. Despite some people being unable to speak English, I am still surprised that many people have working knowledge of the language here in isolationist Japan. It is nice to see most of the signs are completely in Japanese and not in English, which cannot even be said of some places in Jordan. More and more as I travel, I realize what a privilege it is to know English but I feel guilt every time I make a person speak my language in their country. The city of Osaka is fascinating. It's a metropolitan area but I'll see bonsai tree gardens and small fields of crops growing in backyards. It's also kind of funny because the city is pretty low except for this one super tall building which is the prefectural government building. There's also a huge green ferris wheel I can see from all parts of the city. I just took a shuttle from the hotel back to the airport to catch a train to Kyoto. The ride across the water was beautiful with the layers of water, mountain and fog and just a thin line of white city between water and mountain.