The longest trip yet

I left home around 6:15 this morning, picked up my friend Jamin, and headed to the airport.  We arrived a little after 7:00 for a 9:50 flight to New York, made it through security very quickly, and sat around the airport for a couple hours before leaving.  That first flight was short and pretty uneventful.  However, they only gave us two of our three boarding passes when we checked in, and told us we'd have to get the third later.  We also had no gate number for our second flight.

When we arrived at JFK in New York, I asked someone where the next flight was, and she directed us to the terminal on the exact opposite side of the airport, so we walked and rode our way there, arriving just a few minutes before they started boarding.  We had to get out and go through security again in between, since we were changing terminals, and I had a bunch of water left in my water bottle, so I had to quickly down the rest of it to get on, then refilled it before we left.  We also got called over to the Air China desk, where they had our boarding passes ready for the rest of the trip.  I had been worried about having to pick them up in Beijing.

That second flight was way too long.  13 1/2 hours to get to Beijing, and just about everyone on the plane was Chinese, so I couldn't really understand much.  I did at least get to watch the new Muppets movie, but it was really hard to hear.  As for the food, they served two meals, which were actually pretty good.  Chinese food, which I prefer over Japanese in general.

Chicken and rice with cabbage, I think.  Plus some basic fruits, rolls (I got an extra one when they offered), yogurt, and some strange but actually pretty good corn-and-something mix for desert.

My second meal, pork and fried rice.

Jamin got the beef noodles instead, but he thinks the rice would have been better.

The plane went through the arctic circle, pretty close to the north pole.  I've only gone through Alaska before, never that far north.

Here you can see our flight path around the halfway point.  Our time of arrival is n/a, so... we won't ever arrive?

We did finally land, and had to get out and walk through security again, before which I once again drank almost my whole water bottle, since I didn't need much of it during the flight.

Lines were pretty long.  Longer for those staying in China than those of us passing through.

Here comes the fun part.  We actually didn't have any real trouble getting around, since enough of the signs were in English, and the security people spoke well enough too.  We got to the gate, though, and when I looked outside, instead of a plane, there was a bus.  Kind of amusing.  We got to rest a little bit (maybe 15-20 minutes) before boarding started, then lined up and squeezed into the bus with everyone else.  We'll call it practice for Tokyo's rush hour trains.  The bus drove us out onto the tarmac, past a bunch of planes, luggage cars, etc., into the middle of a big open space with our plane, where we climbed up the stairs and got on.  I haven't done that before; it's always been through the tubes that go directly from the airport to the plane.

Moving up to board the plane.

We noticed a few drops of rain on the windows shortly after boarding, and then they said that the flight would be delayed due to bad weather.  Fast forward two hours, after all the rain passes and night has fallen (and the kid in front of us had finished throwing his tantrum about not wanting to stay on the plane and his nose hurting - it was in Japanese so I didn't quite catch everything), and we finally start going to take off.  They'd already fed us our in-flight meal and shown a movie (that I didn't watch).

Last flight food picture for now.

This meal was Japanese style, which means some sort of seafood (octopus?) with packed rice, bitter beans and carrots with cold pork, and an pan, sweet red bean bread.  I managed to eat everything except the bitter one.  I don't know why Japanese people like their bitter, sour, and slimy foods so much.  The an pan was actually really good, though.

I kind of want to go to sleep, so I'll hurry this up.  We got to Japan, filled out the necessary paperwork, and made our way through the first security check up to the luggage carousel, and after only a couple minutes there, someone approached us with our names written on a large sheet of paper, and told us that our luggage didn't make the flight.  It got left behind in Beijing.  Hey, better than being left in New York.

Long story short, we talked to them at the counter for a while, gave them the information of where we'd be staying in Utsunomiya, and arranged for them to ship the luggage up to us.  It'll arrive the morning of the day after tomorrow.  They also gave us each 5000 yen to buy clothes and necessities to use in the meantime, and arranged a night at a hotel.  We had said we didn't have any hotel reservations, but planned to stay at the 9 Hours capsule hotel right at the airport.  Instead, they got us two rooms at Hotel Nikko Narita.  They said we each got a "single" room, which seemed pretty fancy already, but when we got here... wow.  This place is nice.  Way too big for one person's hotel room.  I mean, I've got two beds and four pillows.  And a couch and bench.

Pardon the pixellation and missing parts of the image.  I can't do iPhone panoramas perfectly yet.

As you can see, they also provided clothes for sleeping, and they had all the toiletries I was missing in the bathroom, including toothbrush and razor, so I don't think I'll really need to buy anything on my own with the money they gave us.  Probably use it for the bus/train fare tomorrow.

Here's another view that includes the bench as well.

After a shower and soak in the tub, I came out to write this up, and now will try to get some sleep.  I "slept" a lot on the last flight in particular, so I'm not all that tired, but I need to start adjusting, and check-out is no later than 11:00.

Tomorrow, we set off for Utsunomiya by whatever means are cheapest (we'll inquire at the bus/train ticket counters at the airport).  We're scheduled to meet Charlie outside his elementary school (he's an English teacher) at 4:30.