We're HERE!

Akisamiyo! 

(Which means, as the late Dick Enberg used to say:  Oh my!)

We're HERE!  And honestly, it wasn't bad at all -- except for the lack-of-organization at passport control in Narita!  It reminded us of the chaos at Istanbul, and we were positive we would miss our flight on to Naha, the capital of Okinawa -- but it all eventually came together, and here we are!  It's cold -- about 40 degrees, but of course it's 11 o'clock at night.  I do have to say that the sight of the DoubleTree Hotel was a relief!  Large room (by Japanese standards) but their room service shut down at 10 ... oh well!  We do have DoubleTree cookies and water that I bought at Narita.  I'm going to repack us now -- I always co-mingle clothing, in case of luggage going astray, but all is fine.  I scheduled for tomorrow (whatever day it is, and I'm really not sure!) to be a walking-around-Naha day, so money is first thing on the agenda!  No proper ATM at the airport, unfortunately, but all is well -- the taxi took Visa!  Yeah!!

That actually was the paragraph I sent out to let family know that we had arrived.  It is now almost 7 am on Wednesday morning, and we are getting ready to go down for breakfast.  Robert tells me that it is now Tuesday afternoon (???) in Arizona, so I am truly confused.  And now that R has switched our calendar to Japanese time, talk about a muddle!  But my way of dealing with jet lag and time change is to change my watch to my arrival time when I get on the airplane, and don’t look back.  Fortunately, psychologically, it seems to work for me.

We were up about 4:45 am on Monday morning, as we wanted to make sure we had lots and lots of time at LAX.  Also, as R announced when taking the suitcases to the car – it was raining!  Great!  LA in the first rain of the year (or for quite a while) and it’s dark out!  Hmmm…  We actually had no trouble at all getting to the airport.  We took the 210 to the 2 to the 110, and finally got off at Century Boulevard and headed straight west to LAX.  We had the car checked back in and to Bradley International by just a bit after 7 am.  ANA permitted us to get our luggage tags at 7:15 am, and then their gates officially opened at 7:45 am for the drop off.  There doesn’t seem to be TSA-Precheck at Bradley, but we were permitted to leave our liquid bags and shoes and belts on, so I guess that was something. All in all, a very ordered process! 

As soon as we collected our things, we headed into Bradley’s huge terminal – lots of shops and multiple food options (some of which were closed at that time of day).  We went to Border Grill for breakfast.  I had a quesadilla with eggs and spinach, and R had taco salad, which he announced was good.  We then headed to the gate.  Our plane incoming from Japan was a bit late, so we weren’t able to board until 10:45 am, and we got off the ground somewhere in the 11:15-30 range.

The plane – All Nippon Airway, a code-share partner with United - was basically full.  We had selected seats such that we were sitting across the aisle from each other (seating was a 2/4/3 configuration).  And, the best part, R had the seat next to him vacant!  He then spotted two seats vacant by the window, and the nice flight attendant told him that he could move!  So, R had the two window seats for himself, and I moved over to where he had been sitting, and had two seats for myself, too!  What a deal!!!  Very, very comfortable.  Neither of us slept on the 12-hour flight, but the time seemed to pass very quickly.  Lots of good movies to watch!  I watched “The Holiday” (which we have in our collection and I love) and the second to newest Star Wars movie, the Liam Neeson movie where he plays “Deep Throat” and Reese Witherspoon’s “Home Again” which was pretty feeble.  I realize there were other things in there as well, I just don’t remember what they were at the moment!  At any rate, no problems other than a very turbulent flight and we arrived about half an hour late in Narita in Tokyo.

Then, the customs and immigration.  Truly, in one of the major airports of the world, you would have thought they had figured out how to process people coming in.  Well, they hadn’t.  They literally had us going to one place, and then going back to the first place, and staff members contradicting each other all over the place; truly unreal.  As we had less than 2 hours to get to our next flight (Narita to Okinawa) I had basically given up hope of ever making it!  However, we eventually (after about ½ an hour of waiting in lines) got into the country, went downstairs and claimed our luggage, and then out the door and through the green interconnecting flights door.  There we left our luggage, and headed to the domestic terminal. 

We actually made it without about half an hour to spare, which was great.  As we still hadn’t picked up any Japanese yen, I was able to buy some bottled water with the credit card before we were back on a bus and taken out to our airplane.  This turned out to be a large plane, and there were, quite literally, probably only 100 people on it in total!  Wide open, so I grabbed a center row of three seats, and after take off, used it as an opportunity to grab a couple of hours sleep, as I was able to stretch out and lay down.  Woke with about half an hour to go, and good landing coming into Naha.

We were about an hour late arriving, but luggage came out quickly (yeah!!!) and we were outside in very chilly 40 degree weather to find a cab.  First one didn’t take Visa (again, no yen with us!) but the second one did, and in under 10 minutes we were at the DoubleTree Naha (not to be confused with the DoubleTree Shuri, which we can see from our window!  We’re in a nice queen-sized room (actually two twins pushed together, so definitely a king!) on the 6^th floor – 611. 

As we didn’t get in until 10:30 pm, we had missed the restaurant and room service, which close at 10 pm.  However, with the great DoubleTree cookies and some nuts and dried fruit left in our room, we really weren’t even hungry.  We have booked breakfast for 7 am. 

Just back from breakfast, and I’m finishing up!  Breakfast was diverse and excellent!  Set up as a buffet, we had sort of scrambled eggs and bacon, along with potatoes and juice and some really wonderful fresh pineapple.  We also had some great flat noodles, which were wonderful!  Highly recommend!  Photos tomorrow, as there were some things we could not recognize!

Remote unit for TOILET!

Instructions for remote unit for toilet

Little teeny tiny bathroom trash can!

And can't forget the instructions on toilet seat!

Robert set up the computer first, while I got the luggage organized.  I always pack us into both suitcases, just in case of loss, so took the time to sort things out.  We are now organized, and once this is posted, we will head out to sightsee and get to the bank!  But first …

I hadn’t intended my first Okinawa pictures to be about plumbing, but … sometimes things just work out like that!  First, we have no “ordinary” toilet … it’s a bidet toilet, which we have yet to try.  We definitely will, though, before we leave!  It has a set of instructions but most are in Japanese.  Then I noticed that the toilet came with instructions as well – these are all in Japanese.  And finally, I wanted to include a photo of the diminutive bathroom trash can!  Too cute for words!!

R has already commented that almost everything is entirely in Japanese, which takes some getting used to.  But, as I pointed out to him, this was only fair – I mean, how much Japanese do you daily see in the U.S.? 

So!  That’s the story of our journey here!  Take care, and sending all love and good wishes!

m

xxx