The adventure begins! The day began at home with last minute packing and some slight panicking. We left for the airport at 8:30AM and arrived shortly before 9AM. Good thing too as the security lines were long, without enough lanes open. We managed through it all, grabbed breakfast and were at our gate by 11:15AM for the 11:45AM boarding call. We opted to pay extra from the nonstop flight (the same timing as the flight we took in 2010). It was an ANA flight, but serviced by United, which meant a lot apparently.
Flight boarded and took off without issue. Within an hour or so, we realized the grave mistake of not bringing food with us. When we took this same flight, but fully serviced by ANA, they had meal order options (Japanese and American), snacks and beverages. However, this time around we were informed there would only be one meal service about 2 hours into the flight, one free snack (spicy Asian mix) and another meal/snack combo 2 hours before landing. There was no opportunity to order anything extra and no real "kid-friendly" options. During the flight we also ended up receiving a very cold sandwich somewhere in between, but the calorie count for a 14 hours flight must have been in the 500-600 range total, with all of the food qualifying as mediocre, Terra ate even less than we did. At least we had plenty of entertainment options with the laptop (Netflix downloads included), 2 Switches, 3DS, Tablets and more. Terra might have slept 2 or 3 hours total and we each took one or two cat naps. Overall, the flight was one of the smoothest I've ever experience with minimal turbulence and behavior, given the situation, was good. It was an impressive display on one of the most difficult parts of the trip.
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What ensued from there was a semi-chaotic scramble to the Narita express, back off after another Terra cat nap, off and through our first stop at Tokyo Station DURING RUSH HOUR, which is HEAVILY under construction right now (I assume for the Olympic renovations) and on to the Yamanote line to get to Shimbashi, the nearest stop to our hotel for the night. Oh, little did I realize how INSANE Shimbashi would be during Friday night rush hour (it was 6:45PM local at this point). If the station was crazy, outside was slightly short of insane (Izakaya, "hotels" and host clubs galore) and it was pretty cold at 40F or so. We had 2 large suitcases, one small and one backpack roller at this point, which added to the chaos. Oh, how I wish we could travel with less luggage.
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Most of the tower was closing by the time we finished eating, so it was time to head back and try to get some sleep. We got Shinkansen tickets for 8AM the next day, which in hindsight might have been a bit overzealous. We had a few failed attempts at hailing a taxi (both manually and by using an app for the first time) and ended up walking the mile back to the hotel in the chilly windy weather. A few quick showers, a makeshift sleeping area on the floor for Terra and we were all done for the night. Sleep was much easier than I remember it being on our first trip in 2010, I think Terra racked up 6 or 7 hours straight, Matt got at least 7 hours and I was at about 6 hours of broken sleep after waking up twice for no reason. So far, we were off to a great start.
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