The Log Dog Blog: Land of the Rising Sun: Day 1

Friday, April 7, 2017

Land of the Rising Sun: Day 1

I brought my Tinker Bell tsum tsum for cute photos :-)

I've decided to write a short blog post at the end of each day to capture our spring break adventures in Japan. This will save me from having to scribble notes down to be interpreted when we get home!

We've been wanting to visit Japan for many years - not just to visit Disneyland Tokyo, which is certainly the primary focus for this trip, but also to see Tokyo itself. Based on our research , the Disney parks can get very crowded on the weekends, so we planned to spend the weekdays at Tokyo Disneyland and the two weekends in the city of Tokyo. This trip has been a long time in the making! As I sit here in our hotel in the very early hours of the morning - thank you, jet lag! - I still cannot believe we are actually here!

We left home on Wednesday night at about 9 pm and drove to Staten Island for the night, and then we were up early on Thursday morning to drive to JFK through rain and rush hour traffic. We had no problems at the airport and were sitting at the gate with plenty of time to spare. We flew on ANA for the first time, and I truly cannot say enough good things about this airline!

We boarded the plane around noon, left the gate, and then sat on the runway for 90 minutes because of a weather delay. With a very long flight ahead of us, that additional time on the plane was not particularly welcomed! However, the flight attendants were wonderful and the plane was a very spacious Boeing 777, with a seat configuration of 2-4-3, meaning we had two very comfortable seats to ourselves. The entertainment onboard was also pretty impressive, so overall, no complaints here!

The flight was pretty uneventful...we watched several movies, were served two meals, and we napped. Admittedly I did not sleep for more than a combined total of two hours, which surprised me because on most flights, I pass right out and sleep for the entire time! While I had been somewhat worried about the length of the flight, the time did seem to pass quickly!

We arrived at about 4:10 pm, went through immigration where we were fingerprinted and photographed, picked up our bags, and finally cleared customs. All of that took about 45 minutes, which was not bad at all! We bought combo tickets for the Keisei electric train, which took us from Narita Airport into Tokyo, and a taxi, which took us from the train station through the city to our hotel - including a quick stop at the Tokyo Tower, which is stunning.

The best part of the entire taxi ride was that despite the language barrier, the driver made mention of C's Toronto Maple Leafs hat and told us he'd actually been to a Leafs game! Leafs fans unite in a taxi in Tokyo! :-)

After checking in to our hotel and unpacking, we were ready to sleep because other than brief spurts of sleep on the plane, we'd essentially been up for about 24 hours. A long, but exciting, day of travel to finally make it to Asia! I can't wait to see what adventures are in store!