Shane’s Japan Trip Report Day 1
Japan Trip Report Day 1: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles – Endless Journey to Japan
We took a 9am commuter flight for the short hop from San Diego to LA. The plane flight from LA to Narita was uneventful. It was also unusually empty. So much so that I had an entire row of seats to stretch out and get comfortable. I watched Dinner for Shmucks and a Japanese movie about a girl who’s mother brings home a much younger guy one evening and announced that they are getting married.
My wife, who can never sleep on planes, literally played Tetris for 10-hours straight! The airline food was terrible, worse than usual, and gave me a case of indigestion, not something you want to experience 35,000 feet above the Pacific.
When my wife and I fly to Japan, the 12-hour flight to Narita is only the first leg of our journey. In addition to the quick flight from SD to LA and about a 2-hour layover in LA, after arriving in Narita, we still have a 90-minute train ride on the Narita Express
, followed by two hours on the Joetsu Line shinkansen
to Niigata Japan, my wife’s hometown. Before leaving Narita, I always purchase the Suica-NEX discount package
that discounts the Narita Express leg of the trip, plus gives you a Suica
smart card loaded with 2,000 yen worth of local train travel. It’s a very good deal, and will save you not only money but endless frustration and confusion trying to figure out train fares each time!
I managed to take a little video of the Narita Express pulling into the station. (Note: I bought a new iTouch in order to take pictures and videos with on this trip. Unfortunately, technologically challenged as I am, it took me the entire trip to realize that I had the video camera at the wrong angle; hence the narrow videos. I’ll get it right eventually!)
By the time we arrive in Niigata, we’d been in transit for close to 24 hours and are quite exhausted. As usual, my wife’s father is always there to pick us up and drive us about 20 minutes to my wife’s family’s home in a small town called Yoshida.
My mother-in-law usually has a fabulous spread of food waiting for us, far more than we can possibly eat, but we weren’t very hungry and the awful airplane food was still lingering in my stomach, so we basically passed on dinner, took a nice hot bath, and crashed hard on our futons, looking forward to our first full day in Japan tomorrow!
Proceed to Shane’s Japan Trip Report Day 2–>
