So tired...

After about 18 or so hours of travel we arrived in Japan at Narita Airport. The flight itself was fine, a little turbulence here and there but pretty smooth for the most part. However, I didn't have the most comfortable seat. I guess I checked in too late for the flight online because my ticket said to get my seat at the gate. I ended up with the middle seat in the middle aisle in the middle of the plane. I was in between to American men and behind a Japanese or Japanese-American mother and her two small children. I didn’t really talk to anyone much, but the two men were plenty nice. Heather lucked out - she was in an aisle seat next to two adorable little Japanese girls.

Unfortunately I couldn’t sleep on the plane at all. I go about two hours after they gave us dinner but that was it. I had bought an inflatable “face-hole” pillow and foot rest, and while they made me much more comfortable they weren’t enough apparently. I took melatonin twice too. I will say that even though I didn’t sleep much, it didn’t feel like 14 hours went by. While I spent a lot of the time trying to sleep, I did watch two movies and played a lot of Bejeweled. I watched Black Panther and Phantom Thread and both were very good. There were actually a lot of really good movies available, which was nice.

As a quick aside - I know it’s a running joke that bad comedians talk about airplane food but it was actually much better then Armstrong’s school lunch (see pictures), so there’s that. I have to wonder how much those meals cost the airlines; do they cost a lot more than the spicy chicken sandwiches and pizza we always serve?

Anyway we made it to Narita Airport just fine and were able to get through customs and find the person who was picking us up without much trouble. It was about 3:30 pm local time. Heather and I ended up renting WiFi hotspots at the airport because we were warned that the schools don’t have it and many homes don’t either. Even though I have unlimited data on my phone, I figured that I might need to use my computer to look up pictures of American things at the schools.

The poor gentleman who picked us up was sent with a smaller car (though as I will probably mention later, most Japanese cars are small) and both Heather and I brought two suitcases! Fortunately he was was able to fit them all in and have enough room for us. It was an hour and a half or so car ride from Narita Airport to Saitama city hall and I didn’t get any sleep then either!Read more