Today was definitely an early morning. We had to be down in the lobby by 6 a.m. in order to make our early morning direct flight to Tokyo. We got ready and were just about ready to leave the room when we got a random call. It was one of the leaders and he told us to go back to bed, that we had missed the flight, and that we should just wait until further notice. We were really confused as to what was going on. We found out that there was a mistake on the Itinerary and that Delta had changed the flight time to two hours ahead of what it was previously. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, no one from the group or BYU was notified, and so when the leaders called to find out if the flight was on time, they found out that the flight really left in 20 minutes. So, it spurred a long day full of trying to get 20 people to Japan. We really wanted to make it in on Sunday because we wanted to go to Kyoto, Japan (to see the ancient temples and shrines) and ride the bullet train on Monday.
We munched on our boxed breakfasts that the hotel prepared for us (because we were leaving before breakfast opened for the day) and some of the smarter people in the group actually just went down to breakfast (we weren’t supposed to, but they didn’t know. I wish I would have gone too...I wanted more French toast! Haha).
It took the leaders a couple of hours, but they got half of the group booked on a partner airline’s flight to Korea with the hope that we would be able to get on a second flight to Tokyo. We got everything out of the hotel and got onto the bus to head to the airport. Delta said that they could probably switch everyone over to the new flights, but that we had to be at the airport in order to do it.
We got to the airport and began a long day of waiting…and waiting…and waiting. It took forever, but they finally got us all booked through to Tokyo. Happy day!
We got through exit customs, got checked in our flight, and got all set and ready to go to Korea.
The flight wasn’t too bad, and the girl from the group who was sitting next to me on the plane got “hit on” (not really) by one of the male flight attendants. He saw the book that we were reading as a group and asked about it. He almost went to BYU apparently! So we all had a fun little chat about that. He was such a nice guy.
In Korea, we had about an hour to get our new boarding passes (they didn’t want to let us through new country security because we didn’t have the boarding passes originally) but everything got taken care of pretty quick. Throughout the airport, they have these cultural centers that foreigners can go to and learn about the Korean culture. They had people dressed up in really cool clothes and they were playing this great authentic Korean music. I love Korea!
Anyway, a few people got dunkin’ Donuts, (I didn’t, but I did try a watermelon doughnut…haha), and a Lion bar and we got on the plane. I wanted to get these dark chocolate Kit Kats, but I decided I didn’t want to pay $10 USD for them. Haha.
This second flight was pretty short as well. We had this kind of nasty beef and rice thing with tofu, but the water and dessert was good haha. They had little tvs that you could watch things on so I switched in between the nobel peace prize concert and america’s funniest home videos. AFV had some great clips this round haha. We had some pretty good laughts on the plane haha
We made it to Tokyo! But it wasn’t the end of our journey. First, we had to get through customs (easy)..then get japan rail passes (easy, but time consuming) and last, we had to try and catch the last express train from the airport to the station by our hotel (hard…because of the lack of time). I knew we’d be okay though. The rail passes took a while because they have to write all of them out by hand. (as a side note…Japan is super advanced technology wise, but they have to hand write out the train passes? Go figure.)
We got the passes and had about 5 minutes to make it to the track that our train was on. We missed the last express, but the other train wasn’t too bad. It was nice and comfortable, we just had to switch lines in the middle. Oh well. Its all part of the adventure.
We finally got to the hotel and put our things away. The A/C is okay, we just got really spoiled at the 5 star Regent in China. Haha. It’s still a super nice hotel though.
A few of us were really hungry (we hadn’t really had a real meal all day) and so we went exploring around the area. There is a McDonalds right behind the hotel, so we went over there hoping to have some cheeseburgers or something. It said it was open 24 hours all over the building, and then we found out that they closed at 11! What the heck!
So we went to this convenience store around the corner (which really is open 24 h) and got some food. I felt adventurous and got this ramen thing that looked like it was chicken flavor. The ramen here is much better than in the US. And it definitely was NOT chicken. I think it was a beefy/seaweed, so that made saltily interesting to eat haha.
And having free internet again is nice. I sure am spoiled. And grateful. But not gratefully spoiled. That sounds too pretentious.
Anyway, life is good. Oh, so good.
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