Moving Day to Japan

Tuesday May 10, 2011 was moving day. We woke up at 4:30AM (MS time) to get ready to go to the airport. We had to be at the airport a little early as we had two sea bags, and two large suitcases to check. We also wanted to see about upgrading seats on our "long" flight. We left Gulfport airport at 7am, and landed in Dallas/Ft. Worth at 8:30. We only had 90 minutes in Dallas to change planes (go to the international terminal), and convert out money to yen.

10000Y is approx $120

The coins are 100Y = $1 and 500Y =$5

2000Y and 5000Y

In Dallas we boarded an American Airlines flight that would take us directly to Tokyo, Narita. This flight was twelve and a half hours long. Luckily for Jon & I, we were able to get "bulkhead" seats, so we had extra leg room. The flight was not as bad as we thought it would be. We got up several times just to move around, and use the bathrooms. Each seat had its own TV so we were able to watch TV shows, movies and play video games to pass the time. We each brought a book, and never opened them.

The flight path was very interesting, as we left Dallas, and headed northwest for Washington, and flew over Vancouver, British Columbia, to Alaska, and then covered the Aleutian Islands, and the Bering Sea. During this time, we crossed the International Date line, changing the day from Tuesday to Wednesday, May 11. This just happened to be Jon's 30th birthday!

Eventually we started to head south and came right into Tokyo, Narita.

We were very happy to be on the ground again! Once off the plane, we had to go through immigration, (very easy), claim our bags, go through customs, (easy) and then transfer to another airport. For 6000Y (approx $45) we bought bus passes that transferred us to Tokyo, Haneda for our last flight. It was pouring down rain, and very foggy so it was hard to see the country, but we did see Disney Tokyo (looks nothing like Disneyland). The transfer took about an hour, and we were dropped off at our terminal.

Checking in to a Japanese airport is very different than the US...I guess you could say EASY!! Jon literally walked up to the ticket counter, showed our itinerary, and got 2 boarding passes, no ID was shown. We then walked to another desk, and checked our bags....Japan Airlines DO NOT CHARGE FOR BAGS!! From there, we walked to security....simple. Shoes stay on, sweaters stay on, heck I brought 2 bottles of water with me...no questions asked.

Our last flight was from Tokyo, Haneda to Hiroshima. The weather was still bad, and the airline gave us a heads up that depending on the weather, we may have to turn around, but we managed to get to Hirsohima. We were met by Jon's GySgt, who brought us to base, and got us checked in to the base as well as to TLF.

In all, we traveled 21 hours, and we were awake for about 27 hours straight. We both crashed once in the room, only to wake up at 5:30am the next day!