We run into Ultimate players Stacey & Kirk at the Vancouver airport
Taking the train from Narita airport into Tokyo
Our hotel room
Our first restaurant
Dessert, courtesy of a nearby 7-11
Project TimeShift. We had originally resolved to "pre-shift" our body clocks to Japan time by staying up all night on Friday night, and sleeping during the days through the weekend prior to our departure. That plan ended at 1:30 am on Saturday morning when I fell asleep on the couch. Wesley woke me up and sent me to bed at 2:00 am.
We did manage to stay up until 3:00 am the next two nights, so Monday night we pushed through and stayed up all night. Not too bad, as we would have had to get up at 4:00 am anyway to catch a 5:00 am taxi to the airport for our 6:20 am flight, anyway.
The nice part about this plan was that we would hopefully spend a lot of time sleeping on plane flights, rather than sitting around bored - the only bad part being having to change plans in Calgary, and change airlines in Vancouver. And it did work well. I don't remember anything of the flight from Calgary to Vancover - I got on the plane and the next thing I knew they were announcing our descent into Vancouver. We slept through taxiing and take-off.
How many people does this plane hold, anyway? At the JAL counter in Vancouver, 4 hours before our flight, we found a 50 meter line up for check in. By the time we checked in, this line had grown to 200 meters and stretched across the airport food court.
Just another piece of cargo. We slept for a large chunk of the trans-Pacific flight. I woke up while we were passing Anchorage, Alaska on our great circle route to Japan. I had hoped the JAL plane might have a bit more space between the seats than my last trans-Pacific flight, but we were packed in like the usual sardines. We had an aisle and a middle seat in a row of three, pinned in by a very nice gentleman with a cast iron bladder.
The kindness of strangers. Once we arrived at Narita airport in Tokyo, we wandered around the airport picking up a rented cell phone, getting our Japan Rail passes, etc. I was standing in the terminal scanning signs and trying to find out where to buy a two day pass for the Tokyo subway system (the internet said we had to buy them at the airport; they weren't available once you were in Tokyo), when two Japanese stewardesses' passed by, pulling their wheeled suitcases. "Can I help you, sir?", asked one, noticing I was clearly looking for something. I explained my search. She left her suitcase with her companion, saying, "Wait here, I will go ask for you." A few minutes later, she returned, and the two of them walked us over to the correct counter. "Arigato," I said. It looks like "thank you" is something we will say often here.
After a much longer than expected one hour train ride into Tokyo, we arrived at Ueno station, and got off to look for our hotel. Although I had directions in English printed off the internet, after "go out the main exit and turn left", things went downhill quickly. As we stood on the sidewalk, looking left and right, a Japanese woman stopped in front of us. "Can I help you, sir?", she asked. She wasn't sure where the hotel was, but she escorted us anyway, stopping twice to ask directions for us.
As the hotel had apparently exaggerated their proximity to Ueno station - a "three minute walk" that took us fifteen to twenty minutes (a world class runner - on a motorcycle - might be able to do it in three minutes), this was not an inconsequential favor. Her name was Giami (as near as I could make out). At one point during the walk, she said, "Your son looks like he is about my son's age". "Wesley junana-sai desu," I replied, stating ages being one of our few accomplishments in Japanese. "Oh, you speak Japanese very well," she exclaimed, "I think you will do fine." Quite a leap of faith for her to assume any degree of fluency on my part from a two word sentence.
When we arrived at the hotel, I gave her a small box of saskatoon berry chocolates. She beamed with pleasure, and held them to her face like a fan to hide her smile. "Thank you very much," she said, bowing. "Enjoy your trip!"
We lost our courage a bit going to dinner, and by-passed several restaurants with menus all in Japanese and no pictures of the food to eat at "jonathan's", a family restaurant and coffee shop. Not only did the menu have pictures of the food, but also the name of each dish in English. The staff didn't really speak any English, but we were able to get by with gestures and smiles.
Too much success. Project TimeShift maybe didn't work completely. I fell asleep at 9:30 pm trying to to this log. Now it's 5 am. After waking up at 3 am and being unable to get back to sleep, here I am. Wesley, however, is using the teenager super-power of SLEEP. Oh well, time to finish the video log and see about uploading some stills to Flickr. Ja mata!