Journey to Japan

Wednesday we woke up, loaded our bags, ate breakfast and went to the airport. Then the fun part began. The skycaps saw us and turned the other way instead of helping so we had to go get a few smart carts before we could even enter the airport. Luckily the Delta agents were a bit more helpful inside, and quickly directed us to a counter to check in even though the international counters were still closed. 45 minutes later, all our bags were checked and we had tickets (I can't imagine how much worse it would have been had I not been organized). TSA, of course, was a hassle and freaked out about juice and baby food. Admittedly I had a bit of both, but we were about to get on a 12 hour flight to Japan and I wanted to ensure that my baby wasn't the one screaming the whole way.

Ready to go!

After getting through security we had some time to grab water (I got 6L) and a few sandwiches before boarding. They couldn't actually fit our plane at our gate, so after we checked in we had to board buses and go to some remote area at the other end of the runway with a few gates to actually board. We settled in for a long flight. The kids did well, with Annabelle quickly making friends with a young Asian woman and getting pseudo-adopted by her for a few hours of the flight. When we landed in Narita, Delta's staff were very helpful in getting us and all of our stuff onto our hotel bus.

Welcome to Japan!

The kids were so excited to get to Japan (as were we). Deciding to stay instead of continuing on direct to Guam was probably one of the best decisions we could have made. The Hilton Hotel Narita is a gem of a hotel, well worth the cost to us for the 2 rooms. The staff quickly got our bags up to our room, ensured we had interconnecting rooms (which had cribs waiting for us-yes, cribs, they put one in each room) and made sure we had everything available for a great stay. We all crashed pretty hard pretty early, and were all asleep by 8.

At the hotel

Yesterday most of us were up by 3 (remember we lost a day crossing the date line). We kept everyone calm and tried to get them to rest a bit more, but by 630 the kids were more than ready for breakfast. The breakfast was wonderful and offered American and Japanese options. I am determined to only eat Japanese here, but held off hitting the miso soup and Japanese pickle bar to avoid embarrassing myself until I found an old couple I could watch and follow through. It was well worth the wait.

Following breakfast we boarded the free shuttle the hotel offers to The Aeon Mall in Narita because we needed to get a few things for the baby and were told we could find it there. We did, and probably could have found anything else we wanted too. The place was huge. We ate lunch at the mall and fed all of us for under $30USD. We had Octopus dumplings (they were so good) , fried pork rice bowls and soup for lunch.

We came back, and went to the health club downstairs to take the kids swimming. I wish we could have used some of the facilities apart from the pool, the complex down there is impressive. The kids were a bit weirded out that they had to wear bathing caps to go swimming, but got over it quickly once they got in the pool.

As I type this, it's almost 6am local and 2 kids are already up. It's a marked improvement over yesterday, and the time we have to get up tomorrow for our flight so I'll take it. We hope to explore a bit more today.

If you've made it this far, thanks. Sorry it's so long, but so much has happened in the last few days and I honestly feel like I'm glossing over quite a bit. I hope you all are well, and we miss you all terribly. Thanks to all we saw before we left, I'm sorry to all those we missed. See you all soon!