Take off and Landing

Thanks to our good friends Jack and Jeannie, we find ourselves comfortably ensconced in Business class for our long flight to Narita, Japan. We can't express how thankful we are! Victor thinks we should travel more so we can catch up on the movie scene. We each watched 4 movies, that would be 4 more than we have watched in the last 2 years.

This is Victor's first trip to a destination outside his many language skills and he finds it difficult. Sort of like loosing your sense of direction. Not only can we not communicate verbally, but we also can't read the letters and pretend to break the word down to figure out the meaning. Thank goodness for the widespread use English subtitles. We hope this is the case in more places than just the airport!

Our first event happens when nice man takes my bag and hustles us off to a taxi. This happened so fast and I knew right away this wasn't the way to go as we were staying at an airport hotel. When asked the price and told where we were headed he swiftly returned my bag and pointed us in the direction of the hotel bus stop.

When we arrived we checked out our room and then stopped in the hotel bar for a dinner and a glass of wine. We might have been better suited at a non-hotel airport, perhaps in Narita, as airport lodging is like a prison. You just can't walk out the door and find a good restaurant. We wouldn't even know where to begin! Taking the bus back to the airport for another bus or train didn't seem viable...but it was our first day in the Far East and we needed to acclimate and build up our confidence with little successes, like paying the bill right, ordering what you really want, figuring out the exchange rates and so on.

We find that our personal time clocks are off a great deal and we awake at a terribly early hour. Thank goodness the restaurant opens early.....