| No pictures taken. Sorry! |
After a VERY short night's sleep, we are up at 5:30 a.m. to make an early flight to Tokyo. We have to take 2 taxis to the Singapore airport and so we hustle off. Everyone's in a very volatile mood, as you might expect.
The flight, by United, is very good with a pleasant crew and two good meals. The kids and Kate get some sleep while John works away at the laptop. There's some turbulence due to a typhoon in the Philippines. (Great... we always wanted to be in a typhoon...) We get in at about 3:30 p.m., with just a one-hour time change.
Tokyo takes some adjustment, much more so than Singapore. Although there are signs in English at the airport and we can get assistance in English, we realize we are in a country with a language we can't figure out, unlike Europe where we have some degree of skills with a few of the languages.
We take a limo bus to get to our hotel, the Intercontinental Tokyo Bay - about a one-hour ride from Narita airport and a pleasant ride on the bus. Outside, it's hot and humid.
The hotel is beautiful, cool and quiet. We hate to leave to go out in search of dinner, but eventually we do, and John finds a Wendy's, which makes everyone happy once again. It's after 9 p.m. and we are still seeing people coming out of their offices, businessmen still wearing suits and ties. A cluster of business people gather near the local subway station at an outdoor stand-up bar, drinking beer, eating appetizers and smoking. We head back to the hotel and decide to let the kids sleep as late as they want, which turns out to be almost 12 hours. Everyone's ready to face life again.