The trip begins

So we left off with pre-trip planning! Well of course you know we decided to go... After much debating after the smaller earthquake aftershock, we took the leap. Our planes left around 3-4 am on Tuesday April 29th prospectively. I had checked my seat assignments and every time, the digital schematic assured me I had both seats to myself on the long flight. From Tucson to Texas, it was a short fast jaunt in which my mind blanked out ( possibly napped) and I raced to my next flight. Amazingly I only had about 20 mins to get to the next plane. The airport map made the airport look like a hop-skip and a jump. Truthfully I began running and like a hallway in a nightmare, I found myself never getting any closer to my destination. I thougth I would surely miss the flight and leave J in a panic when I didn't show up at our appointed times ( mine being about 50 mins ahead in arrival). This spurred me to be more hasty. I actually managed to stop my panic long enough to ask if I was nearing my gate. Answer: not even close! I need to take the airport tram and it would be 10-12mins. Before the airport volunteer finished giving me directions, my feet began to propel me, barely letting me say a hasty " Thank you."

I did manage to make it to my flight all in a hot mess. Unfortunately the empty seat next to me.. was filled to max capacity by a rather robust gentleman, who took several minutes to disengage from his seat to allow me into my seat by the window. To his credit he was kindly and proceeded to explain he was with his church group was bringing supplies to Sendai. Unfortunately it did nothing to ease the  discomfort of the trip. I reflected that the painfully thin people in the 3 rows behind me had the row to themselves, while the two full sized folk were smashed together. I had to admit was some kind of horrible irony. This would all of been more bearable if my companion also hadn't had some strangeness to himself. One being wearing sunglasses even in the dark ( so I couldn't tell if I was waking him or not) and the other being that he drank enough to water a herd of elephants but never seem to need to use the facilities. I waited until my eyes began to water before I finally bothered him to use the facilities myself. Each time I asked he started the whole process of disengagement from the seat and I felt terribly guilty causing such inconvenience. Not to mention he always sat down during the wait and I had to watch the getting out of seat process twice for one break( and didn't get a chance to stretch because he'd start getting out of the seat as I got out of the restroom). All that aside he was a very congenial fellow who gave me his bread and salad because he disliked 'rabbit food.' And was never plaintive when I did need to use the restroom. I think I manage to par my restroom breaks for a 12-13 hours to 2-3.

The flight left me nauseous in general. I'm not going to blame it on my row mate. Could of been the close quarters, the food, motion sickness.. who knows.. I luckily did not feel it on the way back. That's another story though. I nearly skipped out of the airplane in happiness not to be trapped in my seat anymore! My flights were all booked on American Airlines. They didn't do a bad job. Their planes for long trips are equipped with personal entertainment systems on the back of every seat, that have a touch screen that requires a bit of a jab. The only complaint is probably that the movies are the same on the way there and back. I ended up watching Burlesque probably about 3 times? I love the dancing and such of it... I definitely need to see at least one real burlesque show one day, not to be confused with a two bit strip club. I want the singing and dancing and a real show!

So I waited in the common area where everyone was waiting for arrivals at. I had thought of staying near the carousels where I got my baggage but felt this would illicit questions and suspicion. After quite a bit of waiting I realized I should double check arrivals in case her plane was delayed.. and upon that I discovered that Air China was not even in my terminal but in terminal 1 with all the domestic flights! I raced to Terminal 1 by calmly ( though my insides were teeming) getting on a bus that took me to that terminal. I stood instead of sitting and was facing a bank of seats that were filled with a Japanese family. When we turned a particularly sharp corner, the baggage facing that row of seats, threaten to jump the rail, in which we all shouted in alarm. It was for nothing because the baggage were safely corralled by good design. We all giggled, even the gentleman, suddenly bonded by our near baggage stampede experience. I remember this because there need not be words exchanged to know what everyone had thought in that moment.

In Terminal 1 I wandered about and saw that J's flight arrived early. I was still before it, so I made myself comfortable to wait. After a fashion, I didn't see one foreigner come through that was blonde and blue eyed. A small trill of panic weeded itself into my stomach. I wandered back and forth to get every angle of the arrivals, which was punctuated by a large square pillar. Finally I walked over to the info desk to call J on the intercom. I saw one girl that didn't really look like J but looked similar but way too tall & oddly dressed ( for the sheer fact I couldn't imagine J wearing those clothes really. I decided to hold back and see if she wandered back my way. Then finally J actually appeared and I recognized her right away. I was glad for some odd reason that the other girl had not been her and I promptly blathered away about how happy I was to have caught her, as well as having sense enough to come back to the right terminal!  We hugged happily and began our journey onward to Tokyo. First stop would be Taito-ku, where Toco Heritage Hostel awaited us.

Incidentally J was tickled pink after navigating her trolley by insistence of the escalator helper lady. She was afraid at first and was trying to remove her baggage to get on the escalator, but the helper lady slid the trolley right onto the escalator. Realizing it's ingenious design, J was in sheer delight! I thought it was rather smart too and wondered why it wasn't something that spread about? Like escalators for shopping carts in Korea. Oh well! Till next time!