Going Home and Flight Difficulties

So yeah, I'm currently in the process of going home for Christmas.  My journey began yesterday (almost a full 24 hours ago now) when Anne drove me to Tome so that I could catch the 7:30 PM bus to Sendai.  That bus arrived in Sendai around 9 PM and I spent my time waiting for my next bus (an overnight bus) by looking around a bookstore.  I caught that one at 10:30 PM and it drove through the night.  We arrived at Narita Airport in Tokyo around 6:30 AM.  Unfortunately my flight wasn't scheduled until 5:30 PM (as I'm writing it's already 5:49 PM and we haven't entered the aircraft yet) so I had quite a bit of time in the airport...  You may wonder why I decided to take the overnight bus this time around and the reason is simple - it's about half the price of the shinkansen (bullet train).

My day in the airport wasn't too bad actually.  I spent the morning going around the different shops and doing a bit more Christmas shopping.  Next from 1 PM - 4 PM I scheduled time in a "nap" room (technically it's called a Day Room) - you can probably guess what I did there.  It had a twin-sized bed I could take a nap in and there was a shower I could use as well (there wasn't a toilet in the room for some reason though).  Anyway, I attempted to take a nap for a couple of hours and also charged my laptop and whatnot at the same time.

As I mentioned, my flight was scheduled for around 5:30 PM but I found out that there was a delay as soon as I showed up after using the nap room.  My connecting flight in San Francisco was already cutting it close in terms of connection time (especially since I'll have to go through customs once I'm in the US).  So they called me up to the desk and basically told me that there was no way that I would make the connection and offered to reserve a seat in the next SF to Boston flight.  So at least the airlines (ANA - All Nippon Airways) is being nice about it.  I feel bad though since my mom had offered to pick me up and with the new flight I'll probably arrive in Boston around 11:30 PM... (sorry Mom!).

Anyway, in other news, here are some things that have happened recently:

I saw Santa Claus at the local Aeon (mall), he was even speaking English, but his accent was pretty bad so I couldn't really understand him. 

It reminded me a little of the KFC guy (see pictures below).

Yup, they have KFC in Japan (are you secretly amazed or does this just make you worry about the state of the world?)

 But I think that the colonel looks a bit different than he does in the US (maybe it's just me).  But the Santa I saw at Aeon looked a bit like this guy.

 The teachers and students at my school received some chocolate bars from a charity organization in the US.  They turned out to be Hershey bars and they had a special Christmas message on the front.

 Here's the message.

I heard a couple of teachers at my school wondering about it when one of them said something like, "Oh, wait, I see.  It says, 'Joy to the Earth!'"  I chuckled a bit but decided not to correct him (I mean, it's very close isn't it?).  Basically, I can forgive something like that, but not something like this:

Grrr.

Anyway, we're finally boarding now so I guess I'm off!