Travel Day

Saturday, July 15

Today is transition day 1. I didn’t have to switch airports in Tokyo, so I ended up leaving in the afternoon. This left one last morning for play in Sapporo. Teresa and I walked to a gorgeous local park called Nakajima Park Chuo-ku and the kids rode their bikes. It was the first and only truly sunny day. The park had the original hotel from Sapporo called Hoheikan, which had been moved to this park. The emperor has stayed in this hotel in the past and now it is often used for weddings. Next door to Hoheikan was a Japanese Garden. We had a good time enjoying the tranquility and taking pictures of the kids.

Around 11am we headed out to the airport. Jeremiah rode with the adults. We got there in time to check in the luggage and then have lunch—of course, it was more delicious sushi. I’ve decided that the squid is a bit chewy for me. It’s not unpleasant, it just lasts a lot longer that one would expect when the other sushi is a melt-in-your-mouth experience. However, I’m staying in the ‘try-everything-once’ mode on this trip.

When I flew to Tokyo, it was really obvious we were heading into a storm. There is a typhoon heading to the southern part of Japan and then working its way up. There were 2 flights from my airline cancelled because of the typhoon and we flew right into the rain. I’m not in the red “danger” part on the map, but I’m in the yellow part. Hopefully, it won’t cause any problems on my flight tomorrow.

JAL planes have a camera on the nose of the plane and they show the runway and what’s in front of you on takeoff and landing. On the descent, it was clouds, rain, clouds, rain, clouds, rain, clouds, rain, runway. It’s still pretty warm, but it’s wet, wet, wet.

When I got to Tokyo, I had to figure out how to get to my hotel. Those of you who know my “I’m lost in Schipol (Amsterdam) Airport” story will realize that I learned from those mistakes. When I got to the airport today, I found the information booth and asked where to catch a shuttle to my hotel. It turns out, you have to call for this shuttle. Now I have to use a payphone in a foreign country (statistically speaking, a low probability for success). However, new calculations on the statistics will need to be done because I was successful!! I called for the shuttle, went out to stop number 26, and waited for my shuttle.

I am now at a youth hostel/hotel sitting on my bed and watching Japanese TV (baseball, talkshows, and fishing—which is just a boring in a foreign language as in English). In a few moments I’m heading out of my room to the dining room for dinner. I have a private room with twin beds and my own full bathroom. It has a nice deep Japanese tub, so I’ll be doing a little soaking in hot water tonight, now that Mike and Teresa have walked me through the process and introduced me to the pleasure.

Time for a relaxing evening and some work on my presentations. I will be teaching this first week from Tuesday through Friday so I have some work to finish. Tomorrow is the travel day to Vietnam. I wonder if it will be as much like France and Japan was like the Netherlands? However, since I’ve never been to France, I won’t know.