In preparation for our travel extravaganza, Kevin, our resident jet lag guru, and I determined to stay up all night Friday night. The plan was to be incredibly tired for our 10am Saturday flight to Narita/Tokyo (NRT), sleep through most of the 13 hour flight, and then to spend the afternoon exploring Tokyo after landing at 3pm on Sunday. Of course, very little went according to plan. I was able to stay up all night while Kevin was not. Our 6am flight from Austin (AUS) to Dallas (DFW) was delayed by hours and, even if we could get seats, the chance of making our connection in Dallas looked grim. So began the 3.5 hour drive from Austin to Dallas. We had almost exactly the right amount of time to get to Dallas in time for the 12pm flight to Tokyo. We had been hoping for first or business class seats on this flight for the previously mentioned purpose of getting a full night’s rest aboard the plane. Unfortunately we were all condemned to coach seats. If you think flying coach domestic is cramped… The middle aisle of seats contained 5 seats with barely enough room for a person to walk through the row before the presence of the other passengers’ legs. The seats barely reclined and when they did, the person behind you was incredibly irritated. But we were of course thankful to be on the flight at all. It was tough to sleep on the plane so instead I watched a few movies (Clash of the Titans, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Leap Year, The Last Song, and part of The Bounty Hunter). We landed promptly at 3pm, claimed our baggage and went through customs without a hitch. With the help of some friendly Japanese citizens, we found the bus to our hotel where we checked into our rooms and quickly changed into downtown-walking clothes. Here came the next hitch in the plans. We boarded what we thought was the bus back to the airport (where we would buy subway tickets and take the train into downtown). Instead the bus took us to a shopping mall about 25 minutes from our hotel. We then had to stay on the bus and ride back to the hotel to transfer to the airport bus. Once we finally arrived at the airport, it was 6pm. Getting a ticket into downtown didn’t seem like it was going to be a problem at all, but after numerous talks with various limited-English companies we determined that we would not be able to get back to the hotel by any means except taxi. The prospect of paying for an hour’s cab ride kept us from going downtown and instead we stayed at the hotel, had dinner, and tucked in for a much needed night of rest.
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