Thursday & Friday

Thursday, June 14, 2006 – en route from Milwaukee
We dropped Liam off this morning at Dan & Steph’s and then went to the airport. We flew to Minneapolis pretty quickly and then waited about two hours for our flight to Narita airport in Tokyo, Japan. Having flown to Germany last year for the World Cup on Northwest we were looking forward to the top notch treatment we got last summer; complimentary drinks, your own individual video screen and controller, those nice thingies that keep your head from falling to one side, etc… Well, we had none of that! A little disappointing but we made the 13 hour flight fine… almost. When we landed in Tokyo we found out that our flight to Incheon Airport outside of Seoul had been overbooked and/or cancelled. Either way, we spent the night at a hotel in Tokyo. Here is Cathy in her complimentary kimono. Here is a look out of our room on the third floor, too bad they didn’t give us our checked luggage so I could go swimming. Another weird thing is that the door to the bathroom is literally only 5’8” tall. The inside of the bathroom is normal height, but if you see later pictures of me with a big red mark on my face, that is why.

Friday, June 15, 2007 – Tokyo, Japan
I now have a big red mark on my head from hitting my head on the low bathroom door frame last night, ugh. We could only sleep until about 5 AM this morning, but to my surprise I was able to watch the U.S. Open on TV. Albeit in Japanese, I could still figure out most of it.

From what we saw of Japan (not much) it seems to be a very nice place. Things are very, very close together. I didn’t know that they drove on the other side of the road either. That was a little strange – can you make a left turn on a red light? The people at the airport were a big help as we tried to find our way to the place where they would bus us to our hotel. We met a South Korean teenager returning from a year of exchange school in the U.S., believe it or not he spent his year in Watertown, SD.

I always feel guilty that wherever we go as Americans that we expect the rest of the world to speak some sort of English and then I’m surprised again when they actually do! I wonder how we would treat someone who showed up in the U.S. not knowing a word of English.

For those of you who are concerned about my caffeine intake, I haven’t found a Starbucks yet. I’m looking forward to finding one of the 169 Starbucks in Seoul when we get there. That will be on my agenda for tomorrow morning.

As far as our agenda, we will be getting to see little #2 (and hopefully deciding on a name then) on Monday at 11 AM. We hope to go to the DMZ on Wednesday or Thursday. We have a city tour scheduled for Tuesday also. Then we pick up the little guy at 3 PM on Friday and fly home on Saturday.