The day after Christmas I left for Japan from Newark airport. Weather reports had been threatening a blizzard to hit on Sunday so I was quite nervous about making my flight. When I got up at 7am on sunday there was no snow. If you know me you’ll understand how weird it is for me to be happy about a lack of snow. The previous night continental had already announced they were suspending operations at 3pm but I had hopes my 11am flight would get out before the storm really hit.

Getting to the airport and checking in for my flight went smoothly. We boarded on time and I settled into my awesome business class flat bed seat just as some flurries were starting to fall.

On my 14 hour flight I read, knit, repaired a sweater, and ate. Oh yes I ate. I decided not to turn down any food offered for the purposes of this blog. We were served a multi course lunch, snacks, and breakfast. Two hours into my flight I had also had 3 big glasses of champagne…..just to help me sleep, of course.

So here is a visual rundown of my flight and meals.

It took forever to taxi to the gate but once I deplaned I got through immigration and customs with no problems. Lisa and Amanda’s flights didn’t arrive for another hour so I tracked down the Black Cat Yamato baggage delivery service and had my board bag delivered to Tabi Tabi Lodge for about $20. After running around Tokyo station this proved money well spent.

I settled down in the Meeting Place to wait for Lisa and Amanda. Checking out the arrivals board I saw that a flight that was supposed to arrive from NYC less than an hour after mine was canceled – so I was very lucky to have made it!

People watching in Japan is amazing! Japanese people are so adorable and I want to take them all home with me.

I had to wait about 30 minutes for Lisa to arrive and Amanda got there a few minutes later. We took care of getting their bags delivered and headed down to the train station. Now we just needed to make it to our hotel in Tokyo!

One of my big tasks was assembling my first aid kit. It’s annoying that some stuff only seems to be available in a first aid kit – like antiseptic wipes. I used a shiny black smashbox makeup bag for my kit. It looks hot.

On the topic of health, at my mother’s insistence I got tetanus and hepatitus A shots. The doctor also asked me if I wanted Typhoid vaccine and Anti-Malarial precription and to check the CDC. Turns out I do. The doc prescribed me Malarone with insurance it was $150 for 24 pills. The typhoid vaccinne, which is 4 pills you take every other day, was $60 without insurance. I’m glad I’ve got some HSA/HRA action this year. I wonder if my anti-malarial is going to give me hallucinations!

Now I am thinking of packing. The problem is that I needed to do laundry first and our dryer broke on saturday. We got a new one last night, so today I will be laundering and packing.

The big thing I have left to do is get/take passport photos for visas.

On a related note, a Bangkok Air flight skidded and crashed on the runway at the Koh Samui airport. Guess what airline I’m taking to Samui in a couple of weeks? At least our plane isn’t a prop jet.

I was almost 10hrs late for my flight. Thanks to Greg for pointing this out.

Now I probably would have noticed this when I sent my mom my flight info..but at least now I know I have to pack friday night.