Hello Tokyo

Delta flight 295 took off from Atlanta at 11AM, and I settled in just a little better prepared for the trans-pacific experience than I was back in 2009.  Maybe it's because my last major work trip was 2 flights totaling almost 19 hours of time in the air with a 5 hour layover in the middle, but this flight definitely felt easier than it could have been.  Hurrah for being prepared.

I had brought water and juice with me, and made sure to get up and stretch periodically.  I knocked a couple of movies off my to-watch list ("Ant Man and the Wasp", and "The Incredibles 2"--both very much cases of "does what it says on the tin.") and managed about 4 hours of nap time, which leaves me starved enough for sleep that hopefully tonight my body will succumb to a relatively full night of rest.

I cleared Immigration and Customs quickly, since I travel light and (it seems) I have finally learned how to answer the questions asked relatively succinctly, and wait--open faced and obviously hiding nothing--to answer the questions they never bother with if you look eager to answer them.

The signage and layout of the section of Narita airport that you are ejected into when you clear customs belies the notion that it serves 40 million passengers a year, feeling more like a regional transport hub.   It was charming, and I was glad that I apparently landed at a relatively un-busy time of day and year.

I queued for a train ticket to downtown, and sprung for the Skyliner--the fast train that would have me at Ueno station to meet The Cynic and The Artist in just 45 minutes.  It felt a little odd to voluntarily spring for the faster train and reserved seating, but there were a few good reasons for it, and I suspect a lot of this trip will be spent reminding myself that I'm allowed to spend a little more money than when I was stretching $4k to last two months the last time I was on this side of the world.

I'm writing this update from a tiny tray table, and musing over my options for the easiest way to attach pictures taken from my phone to these posts, considering that the blogger app apparently is not particularly good at uploading them.  Most likely I'll set up a folder I can push pictures to on google drive and pull them from there when I have wifi.  We'll see.   In the meantime I'm afraid you'll just have to suffer through my occasional thousand-word attempts to convey what I'm seeing.

Currently, what I'm seeing is dusk overtake the beautiful gray clouds of a winter day in the outskirts of Tokyo from the window of my train car.  I've got a delicious coffee drink and a Pocari Sweat snagged from a giant vending machine in the train station, and a soul singing with the joy of being immersed in the beginnings of an adventure. 

Damn, it's good to be back on the road.