Our trip started on Thursday, June 18th. Since we were coming from three places - Minnesota (Mom), Texas (Mamie), and DC (Me), we first met up at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport at the gate for our flight to Tokyo. My flight from DC had gotten in a little late, so Mom and Mamie were already waiting. There was just enough time to grab a subway sandwich and pick-up some Mountain Dew to bring for my cousin before boarding the flight.
The flight was ok in most respects - there wasn't much turbulance, no children kicking my seat or babies crying. However, the movie situation left much to be desired. I thought that all the long-haul flights like this now used planes where each person had an individual video screen and could start and stop movies at will. Apparently, that's not the case. Northwest just had a couple bigger, overhead screens (partially blocked by the person's head in front of you), and they only played three movies over the course of the twelve hour flight - meaning the first movie didn't start until 4 hours into the flight, and the last one was over well before we arrived. I ended up seeing "He's Not That Into You" before deciding to get a nap in. Mamie wasn't interested in movies, and instead watched the scenary, which included some cool Canadian Mountains.
Suddenly, it was 6pm on Friday. (We lost 14 hours due to time-zone changes, and the flight is 12 hours, so we essentially lost an entire day.) At the airport we needed to run through a checklist of to-do's. We got some cash, picked up our Japan Rail Passes, made all our train reservations for the trip, and then finally took the hour and a half bus ride to the hotel. By the time we got settled, it was 10pm, and all we were really interested in was sleep.
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