Well I made it! What a very hectic day and a half, or two days or whatever is was. Good news is that the plane got in almost an hour early, the bad news was it was still a 12 hour plane ride. I tried briefly to figure out how long I was in transit, but it's confusing with the time zones and the date change, so I'm calling it a day and a half and sticking to that.
Flight out from MBS was fine, very narrow cramped plane that was full, but hey, that flight is usually like that and it's short. Made it to Ohare and rushed a bit to find my gate, I always, always find my gate first, then attend to anything else I need to do in an airport. Found the gate, grabbed some food, bought a book and charged up the computer and my phone. I almost completely forgot the most important part, EXCHANGE MONEY, still calling myself a dumbass for that one. Luckily the currency exchange was literally 75 yards from my gate. I already had some yen, but my debit card magnetic strip is being wonky so I decided to get extra and rely more on cash than I planned.
Boarded my flight, this is a BIG! aircraft, I did try to swap to a window seat but couldn't. Attendant told me I had a pretty good seat so I left it, he was right. Flight crew and stewardesses were all Japanese, all spoke good English but some of the accents were harder to understand than others.
I'll say one thing, U.S. airlines could learn a thing or two from the Japanese, we got drink service as soon as they could physically get the cart down the isle, immediately after that they brought you a hot towel to wash up with, then right after that meal service started. I had planned on sleeping first but stayed up for the meal, which was probably the best airline food I have ever had. After everyone was served they came by with a succession of drinks, green tea, english tea, coffee, orange juice, other juices, seems like they came by every two minutes for a half an hour until everyone had had at least one drink. After the meal however I wanted to sleep and they took forever to clear my tray, too busy serving drinks. Finally they did and I crashed for about 3-4 hours.
When I woke up I played with the built in entertainment console on the seat back. It had movies games, music and documentaries. However mostly I played with the flight tracking software, this allowed me to see where we were, how long to go, maps and even a camera view from the belly of the aircraft. I've got some neat screenshots but they are on my phone and I can't upload them right now.
Got in found my train and made it to the hotel about 5pm local time. The train system is confusing as all heck, even saw locals that were lost. Luckily I had written down my exact route and transfers, so I had no issues except the usual fear of somehow missing my stop.
Hotel is nice, it's not new and is more of a cheap weekly apartment, but the heat works and the shower is hot and excellent water pressure. I checked in, and then walked to the local 7-11 for dinner. . . yes I said 7-11. Convenience stores in Japan have surprisingly good food, something I knew before I came here. I was tired and not feeling adventurous so I grabbed a plate of something that looked like spaghetti, it was, it tasted basically like spaghetti with Ragu meat sauce. To be clear, 7-11 food isn't high cuisine, but it is definitely better than just edible. I also got a rice cake thing that had seasoned rice and a piece of salami like meat on it, very good. They make these rice cakes in tons of flavors, I've had a couple for snacks now and I think I will miss them when I go home.
Enough for now, next post is some pictures.
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