Angie's Turn

Well, as Scott said, it was a long flight, made longer by sitting at the airport for 5 hours before getting on the plane. My fault, I should have checked our flight status before we left the house. We breezed through Seattle traffic and security at the airport and ended up waiting around for our troubles.

The flight wasn't bad, but I had to resort to earplugs to drown out the schoolgirls. They were still going strong with the laughter and giggling until we landed. I'm sure they were happy to be heading home. I'm also very glad we were able to upgrade to Economy Plus seats. The extra leg room came in very handy. Service and food was remarkably good on the plane and there was a neat in-seat video monitor that tracked the speed, altitude and progress that was interesting to watch.

Clearing customs and immigration in Narita was nice and easy even though I don't think my Immigration guy spoke English, we managed. As Scott said, it was very nice and reassuring that the travel company had figured out our delay and was waiting for us. We were both very concerned about getting to the hotel on our own. One thing that seemed very wrong, was on our way to the hotel, we passed a AM/PM, a 7-11 and a Sizzler. In Tokyo! It just seems wrong.

The hotel is VERY nice and huge! I has two towers, on is 39 floors and the other is 34 floors. The staff mostly speaks English and are very helpful. We have a bidet.

Possibly because of our long day yesterday, we went to bed at 10:00 pm Tokyo time and managed to sleep until about 4:30 am before getting up to work out. Yes, we worked out. The fitness room had very little ventilation and it was very stifling, but we managed to do cardio for an hour. They had some weird machines that looked kind of like tiny mechanical bulls. We managed to get one going but couldn't for the life of us figure out what muscles it was supposed to be working. Limited weights so we will probably forego our weight/resistance training until we see the facilities in Beijing.

We are now getting ready to spend the day with Scott's friend, Aiko, visiting the touristy sites in Tokyo. I hope to have some form of noodles for lunch.