To start this travel blog correctly, I need to start the day before. Now, I can’t speak for everyone else, but the day before the trip is where the anxiety starts. Am I getting up with enough time to make my flight? Did I pack everything I am going to need? Am I forgetting anything? But this trip was a little different.
For some reason, I booked the flight leaving Ontario at 6:00 AM. I also reserved parking for my car at a local hotel. This meant that I would need enough time to drive from Lake Arrowhead down the mountain to the hotel and drop my car off, then get a Lyft to the airport. The plane departs at 6:00 AM, one hour drive, time to get over to the airport, need to get to the airport two hours ahead for international flights. I figured that if I left by 2:30 AM, that would be enough time. Now the next phase of anxiety kicked in as I feared if I went to sleep would I not hear the alarm and oversleep? Probably it wouldn’t happen, but I stress a lot. This caused me to not be able to sleep and decided to just stay awake.
I loaded my car and left by 2:00 AM, I dropped off my car, got my Lyft to the airport and everything happened without incident, that I arrived at the airport at 2:55 AM. I didn’t know it at the time, but the ticket and baggage check-in and security don’t even start their shift until 3:00 AM.
The good news is I made my flight from Ontario to San Francisco, which felt like it took ten minutes. I was out like a light right after the airplane took off. The flight from San Francisco to Tokyo was an 11-hour flight. I slept off and on so it wasn’t too bad.
As I landed in Tokyo which was around 2:00 PM – Tokyo Time and a day later (international date line crossing), it seemed like several of the airplanes landed around minutes of each other (so many people in lines for customs). I had heard that Japan had the worse airports for customs. It’s not bad except for the crowds of people and figuring out what line to stand in and understanding the process of scanning your passport. I was finally able to stand in another line for a taxi and get to my hotel room.
The saga continued where, for some unknown reason, I had a glitch on my iPhone where I didn’t have cell service even though I have the international plan. Doesn’t seem like a big problem until you Google a place to eat using the hotel Wi-Fi, then start walking out of the hotel, realizing no more map to the place you were walking to eat. A little challenging to find it, and yes, I did walk right past it and not realize it. Overall, all it has been an exciting experience, especially where English isn’t the primary language. Oh, by the way, I have a trip to go to Mount Fuji and ride the bullet train tomorrow (today), and it’s raining.
