March 8-9, 2011
I had about 2 hours of sleep and it's mostly due to my poor planning in packing, organizing and etc., so I was still scrambling. It was also because I was waiting for my sister Putri and and my niece Ivory to arrive from Iowa. They arrive around Midnight or so, unloaded their bagages from the car and went to bed in Treyton's bedroom. Jeff and I woke up at 3 am and began preparing to leave. We woke Treyton up about 3:30 am, woke Ivory up about 3:50 am. The Super Shuttle van arrived about 4 am and made two stops for additional passengers before our final destination to Mpls/St. Paul airport.
I had about 2 hours of sleep and it's mostly due to my poor planning in packing, organizing and etc., so I was still scrambling. It was also because I was waiting for my sister Putri and and my niece Ivory to arrive from Iowa. They arrive around Midnight or so, unloaded their bagages from the car and went to bed in Treyton's bedroom. Jeff and I woke up at 3 am and began preparing to leave. We woke Treyton up about 3:30 am, woke Ivory up about 3:50 am. The Super Shuttle van arrived about 4 am and made two stops for additional passengers before our final destination to Mpls/St. Paul airport.
We had a little difficulties at checking in because the Dolly Parton look-a-like gal thought our final destination was Tokyo, thus we would need a Visa. After explaining to them that we were just transiting, we finally made our way through security, had what we thought would be the last American meals, McDonalds and rushing to board the plane. The flight to Chicago was about 67 minutes watching re-run TV shows of 30 Rock and some others that I really don't give a damn about. Jeff was pretty nervous at this point.
Treyton got a kick out of the overhead light display
We finally arrived at O'Hare. During the 4 hours of layover, Putri separated from us to make sure her bagages were checked while we examined the skeleton at the terminal and shopping for some snacks and reading materials. The kids, Treyton and Ivory, finally got to open their trip bag. A trip bag is a bag filled with new toys to keep the kid occupied, something that Treyton looks forward to every time we're about to go on long trips, especially new places. We got Ivory a pink DS so that she didn't have to watch over Treyton's shoulder during the long ass flight. Both kids got some coloring books with markers, new games for the DS and legos for Treyton. We met up with John and had some Chicago dogs, well we thought, when in Rome...and turns out this WAS our last American meal, not the Mickey D's we had in Minneapolis.
Posing with a dinosaur skeleton. He was in that "winking" phase
Ivory's Trip Bag
Treyton's Trip Bag
Finally seated for our flight to Narita. 14 hours of flight, here we come. We flew via ANA (All Nippon Airways), seems like a newer plane with super fancy gadgets. The seats were comfortable, even for Jeff. Jeff was drooling over the beautiful Japanese flight attendants and I drooling over their Japanese conversation. I couldn't help but smiling watching them conversing in Japanese. I could just sit there and watch the Japanese talk. It was beautiful.
Yeap, Jeff knows exactly what movie he's going to watch first.
The Not-Free snacks that can be purchased looked mighty delicious but boy were they expensive!
Tons of games and movies during flight. We all were plugged in.
Jeff didn't discover 3/4 of the way that the remote was removable. He thought it was forever tucked in under the arm rest. Experienced one day elapsed on the flight with no sunset as we flew over Canada, Alaska, Aleutians, the Pacific before our final destination, Tokyo. We kept the windows down to allow people the opportunity to sleep. Jeff and I are not a sleeper during flights. John politely warned me that he will sleep practically during our 14 hour flights except during meals and snack times.
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Our first Japanese meals, two choices, all accompany with some Japanese made beer. On the right, scallops with veggies and rice, cold potato salad topped with salmon roe (it was already gone before I took the picture), cold chicken. On the left (recommended at that time by our flight attendant) chicken teriyaki with veggies, white rice, miso soup, fruit , potato salad, seaweed and pickled daikon.
I had two dinners (the chicken and the scallops) since Treyton was asleep and I ate THE WHOLE THING.
Rice crackers and Japanese Parfait, shooter size, ice cream with green tea shortbread for 700 yen (9 bucks)
Jeff watched Harry Potter twice and I watched a bunch of movies and most of them I hadn't seen. When you take 12 credits in one semester, while working full-time and keeping the house and the boys clean, one just cannot afford the time to watch a movie. So I thought it was a treat for me. Some of the movies I saw that were playing at that time, Burlesque with Christina Aguilera, The Nanny Diary with Scarlett Johanson (AWFUL), Never Let Me Go with Carrey Mulligan (VERY good movie), Hereafter with Matt Damon (NOT BAD), Life As We Know It with Katherine Heigl (eh? not too bad considering the circumstances) and a couple of other Japanese and Korean movies that were pretty entertaining as well. We also played a ton of games. The games can be played with other players far away from your seat. You can also text other passengers back and forth.
