Narita, Japan, day 1 (April 9)

We woke up at 5am in Bangkok and headed to the airport. There, we learned thatnour flight was delayed an hour (it was coming from PARIS!) and then it was delayed another hour on the tarmac as we waited for the mechanics to fix the engines that wouldn’t start! Eventually, we were off! This was a huge A-380 Airbus. Our seats weee in economy, on the upper deck. The last time I flew up in economy upstairs on a 747, there were only a handful of rows upstairs. On this plane, there were at least 40 rows, each row with 8 people in it. Huge plane!

Some 5 hours later, we made it to Narita, Japan! We checked into our hotel (funny story: G made the reservation but it turns out it never was made and he wasn’t surprised that the non-English speaking receptionist didn’t want an email address to send him a confirmation email. That was in January. I called today to confirm, only to learn we had no reservation. They found us one room with 3 single beds ... so we will be snuggling! We move to 2 rooms tomorrow.) we smooshed the beds together and against the wall to try to maximize space.

We head out for some dinner. It is cold here (spring here so 49 F / 9 C) but it feels extra cold after months of heat. The girls had pants on, sneakers and socks, a t-shirt, sweatshirt and fleece coat! And still were cold! G found a delicious ramen place so we feasted on ramen, fried rice, and edamame before getting the girls to bed.

Tomorrow we explore Narita’s temples and cherry blossoms!