We are in Japan. Safe and sound, all tucked into our little Japan hotel beds...
The trip has been long. We started in Nashville, Wednesday morning 6:30am...flight to Detroit at 8:30am, landed in Detroit, had a quick layover and then hopped onto our plane bound for Tokyo. This flight was long, there was some bad turbulence and some bad service but overall, it could have been much worse. I think most of us slept as much as we could. The majority of us chose not to sleep Tuesday night before our flight so we would be good and tired for the 13-hour flight and I think that strategy worked for most. I will admit to the fact that I got sick. I don't know what it was…just kidding I do. It was the fact that they literally started serving us breakfast 30 minutes before we landed. So with breakfast in our stomachs and not exactly the softest landing in the history of landings...it happens. But the best part of the flight hadn't even happened yet by the time we landed…
With the swine flu scare Japan has taken some precautions to keep it out of their pristine country. We were warned before we even landed that the quarantine crew would come aboard the plane to make sure everyone was safe to get off. We were all required to fill out a health form asking us questions about where we would be staying while in Japan, had we had any coughing or mucus or high fevers…etc. I’ve been suffering with allergies these past few days but asked Dr. Velikova if I should admit to that. She said no cause really they were just asking for us to be admitted into quarantine. They came by with these heat sensor camera things and were scanning all of us. The guy stopped by Dr. Velikova and said something along the lines of, “you have a fever” and she replied “no, I don’t have a fever I don’t know what why your machine says that” so then the lady with the camera guy motioned to Dr. Velikova to take her temperature in her ear. The temp came back good and the first scare was over. We were all laughing at the situation.
Unfortunately, the fun was not over yet. Brenda, who has also been suffering from allergies, decided to go ahead and admit to the symptoms that were mentioned on the sheet. This was the noble thing to do, (there was a nasty threat at the bottom of the page that said you would be imprisoned and quarantined if you did not admit to symptoms you had). A woman came around collecting our sheets and asked Brenda about hers. Brenda tried to explain to the Japanese woman about allergies but she didn’t understand and all of us were wondering who didn’t give Brenda the memo about not admitting to anything. Whoops. So the woman had another guy come over and Brenda convinced him that it was just pollen, grass, etc…and that she was taking Claritin. We all just had to laugh at the whole experience and when they finally let us off the plane we were more than ready.
We had a little confusion as to where to go after our Tokyo flight, we still had another flight to Osaka to catch. Luckily we had a long layover, which we spent getting our rail passes and other misc. business things taken care of. Before our Osaka flight most of us enjoyed some Japanese noodle dishes/dumplings and a beverage of choice. My first experience with a true noodle bowl was excellent, very salty, just the way I like it. Our last flight of the day to Osaka left at 6:20pm on Thursday, we got to spread out and almost everyone had a row to themselves. I passed out before we even took off the ground and woke up only when we hit back down on the ground.
We found our bags very easily, thank goodness, in the Osaka airport. We sent them off in Nashville, TN and I really think that it was a miracle that all of them were waiting for us in Osaka, Japan. The next step was to catch our train to Kyoto. The train was scheduled to leave at 8:47pm but by the time we got out of customs it was already 8:45pm. So we rushed out to the station where we learned that the train was late and would be arriving at 9pm. Yay! That could have been very bad. The train ride was another hour and a half and then we hopped on one more for about 10 minutes. From there we were finally in Otsu, where our hotel is. We easily checked into our rooms and off we went. WHAT A DAY!
I don’t think that it has hit us yet that we are in JAPAN; it hasn’t hit me yet at least. Tomorrow is an early day for us; we’re meeting up around 9am and heading to Kyoto for a festival. I don’t know what this festival entails but I’m sure excited to find out.
Stay tuned to learn more of our travels as this trip progresses…
With love,
Annalise