CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Koichi Wakata was still getting used to gravity, though it wasn’t going to stop him from diving into a deluge of sushi.
Huge amounts of the delicacy awaited the Japanese astronaut Friday after his return to Earth on shuttle Endeavour with six other astronauts. Wakata, the first Japanese astronaut to take a long space journey, lived in orbit at the international space station for four and a half months.
“I feel great,” he told journalists who jammed an auditorium, most of them Japanese. “When the hatch opened, I really smelled the grass of the ground and just glad to be back home.”
Wakata made it back just in time for his 46th birthday Saturday. He said he was looking forward to lots of sushi and good birthday cake, to which shuttle commander Mark Polansky asked, “And you’ve invited your whole crew, right?”
“Yes — can you handle raw fish?” Wakata said, laughing.
