As with most Day Ones this was mainly a tail of transit. I picked up Brien from his house at about 2:45am on Saturday morning. I had not bothered to sleep for the night in hopes it would allow me to pass out during the flights thus helping them feel shorter. From Brien's house it was a short drive to Ronni's where we stayed for about 15 more minutes until the Flightline van arrived and we were driven to Logan airport. The lady driving the van was nice and does it part time because she can't bear the idea of actual retirement. We got to the aiport before it was technically open and had to wait a few minutes before we could get through the checkin then wait a few more minutes before getting screened for security. From there we had a bit of a wait until the flight actually started boarding, to the tune of two hours or so. The flight to O'Hare was very quick and there was almost no turbulence. I read a couple chapters of Kafka on the Shore by Murakami then dozed off a bit because I had succeeded in getting myself to that sort of exhaustion state.
Of course we arrived in Chicago a few minutes early and that meant that our layover of over 3 hours was even longer. The gate they choose for flights to Japan on Saturday morning/afternoon appears to be the same each time as we ended up at gate B16 all over again. It was the same gate we took for the 2007 trip. This time, as I said, we had a longer wait though and there was a flight to Hawaii in the gate before our plane would board. We ended up finding a chunk of wall on the main hallway and sitting there for the main portion of the time we had to wait. The plane did board on time and we took off on time. It was still a painfully long flight coming in at over 12 hours long. I managed to sleep through some of it in spurts but I was sitting next to an older Brazlian woman who first tried to steal the aisle seat from me then spent a fair portion of the trip jabbing her elbow into me as much as she could with the pretense of folding and refolding the airplane blanket. At one point I had to get up and walk away from the seat or I was going to hit her. Fortunately she passed out in that duration and I was able to get some sleep. I also watched The Fantastic Mr Fox which was one of the movies they were showing. We had an A320 to Chicago and a 747 to Narita. The 747 did not have individual seat entertainment systems. They also showed a couple other films but I slept through them enough not to try to watch them. I did not read on the long flight though I did listen to a few albums on the iPhone.
The passport line at Narita was huge but it did move fairly quickly. It never felt like it was completely stopped. I think it took us about 45 minutes to get through it. By the time we were done that we got our luggage and went quickly through customs. We took the Narita Express to Tokyo Station then took the JR Yamanote line to Hamamatsucho. We took a few minutes to get disoriented and reoriented and found the Hotel Villa Fontaine where we are staying for our two Tokyo stays. The hotel checkin was quick and had no issues whatsoever. I am in 301 and the other room is 310. The rooms are small but clean and have updated stuff as well as an internet connection. The bed is a full size bed for me. They had the heater on full blast when I got in the room and I had to shut it down. The toilet has a heated seat as well as bidet and other electronics. I cleaned up with a shower and then we got together and walked up the street to visit Kirin City (a favorite from the last trip) for dinner. I had two Kirin Ichiban Blacks and tried their roast duck with horseradish which was very good. Brien had the lamb and a Moscow Mule and Ronni had a fried chicken and potato chips dish along with a mixed drink. After eating dinner we made a quick stop at a convenience store to pick up some stuff and then headed back to the room.
I was excited to find new episodes of Sasuke (Ninja Warrior in America) on TV and started watching that while my computer was borrowed for a few minutes before I started to write this up. I have only a small number of pictures from the travel day but I got pictures of the food from Kirin City without forgetting until I was done eating
The pictures can be found here.
My hope now is to crash for the evening then get the troops to do a city bus tour tomorrow. Tentatively expecting to meet up for breakfast at the hotel tomorrow at 8am.
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