Well, I think it only appropriate that I should be typing this while halfway across the ocean. What a flight! 11 hours and 50 minutes, non-stop. I'm just glad I'm in business class and have as much room as I could want. Nevertheless, it's still a long time to be stuck in a plane. The noise is something else, even without being near an engine. In addition, the headsets are really noisy. I've made an great discovery, though. If I wear earplugs, and use the headset with the volume turned up higher, it actually doesn't sound bad...Seems to be a pretty bizarre way of doing things, though.
Now, for the time difference. It's pretty easy, even though I'll be across the date line. To figure what time it is in Osaka, just add 14 hours to the time in the Central time zone. Another way of thinking about it would be to flip AM<-->PM and add two hours. So, when the U.S. stock market opens (8:30 AM CST), it'll be 10:30 in Osaka (Ouch! Trading stocks from Japan is going to be much more difficult than I thought!).
Anyway, I guess that's it for now. Hopefully my arrival at the hotel won't be too traumatic. I'm a bit concerned that I've got more luggage than I'm used to travelling with. It's not getting around that's the problem (I hope that whoever invented the wheels on luggage got plenty of money for it). It's getting everything unattached and into a bus that concerns me.