Let's go to Japan!

 So we decided, for our tenth anniversary, that we wanted to do something special. And a whole bunch of things coincided to make that something special actually feasible, even possible... so we did it.

We're going on a two-week once-in-a-lifetime trip to Japan for our 10th anniversary!!

I promised to share the itinerary and whatnot with everyone, so here it is! I put all of this together from scratch, without a travel agent. 

OUTGOING FLIGHTS:

Albuquerque to LAX: Flight 3012 departs Wednesday, February 1st, 2023 at 7:20 pm MST, on a Bombardier CRJ700 (flying as American Eagle). This flight is on time, as of me typing this (4:08pm 1/31/23). We're supposed to land at 8:26pm PST (9:26pm MST), get from the regional terminal to the international departures terminal (the app has directions, thankfully), and then... sit and wait. Until midnight!

LAX to Tokyo Haneda: Flight 169 departs Thursday, February 2, 2023 at 12:09am PST (1:09am MST), on a Boeing 787-8, taking a route along the west coast, passing over the gulf of Alaska and the Aleutian islands, then off the Eurasian continental shelf and south along the east coast of the Sakhalin islands, Hokkaido, and Tohoku before landing at Tokyo International Airport, aka Haneda, at about 5:05 am JST (1:09pm MST).

I'm told there will be meals served and reported our food preferences and allergies, but we might have to pay for them. We're hoping to knock ourselves out with night meds ~8 hours ahead of scheduled landing time to hopefully reset our sleep schedules a little and reduce the impact of jet lag. TBH, staying up until 2 am and then sleeping until what would be 1 pm sounds fine to me, but we'll see if I still feel that way Saturday.

AFTER LANDING:

Sora24 or TokyoCheapo has a video about entering the country at Haneda airport, in which they described three hells: the quarantine station, the immigration station, and the customs station. Only one of these makes me nervous at this point, and it's not even fear of not getting through, it's just the anxiety of watching someone go through my medicine bag to see what I'm bringing into the country.

VisitJapanWeb, the official page/app for entering the country, makes most of it easy. We found our immunization cards, which had all our COVID vaccines listed. Each of us has had six shots, cumulatively, and it's kind of amusing to see the bottom of the screen where it says my validity start date was all the way back on 8/17/2021. All they need to see for that is the blue screen and text saying REVIEW COMPLETED. Also in the app is the disembarkation card for foreigners, which is basically: who are you, why are you visiting, and where will you be staying. I have a QR code I can display alongside my passport, which should get me through immigration quickly. Finally, the app has customs covered (mostly) with the declaration of personal effects and unaccompanied articles; that's probably where we'll have to stop, disgorge the contents of our medicine bags, and watch as someone counts out 12-15 pills about 30 times. Hopefully, this will be off to the side so I don't have a massive line of people breathing down my neck.

Nothing is open in Tokyo at 5 am except convenience stores, karaoke bars, or internet cafes. The train barely starts running around 5. I don't expect to be through the Three Entry Hells until around 6am at least. A free shuttle bus will take us from Terminal 2 to Terminal 3, where the portable wifi shop and the JR East Service center open at 6:30am and 6:45am, respectively. Once we have what we need from there, we can take either the Keikyu line or the Tokyo Monorail off the airport's artificial island and reach Tokyo proper, at either Hamamatsucho station or wherever the Keikyu takes us (probably Tokyo Station or Shinagawa station, the latter links up with the Yamanote loop line that goes around the city).

After that... the adventure begins!