In a nutshell. After about a day of travel, plus the 15 hour time difference, I've lost an entire day. I'm finally back in my cozy yet chilly apartment. My 3rd embarkation to Japan was lengthy but went pretty smoothly. Mind you, when I left, I hadn't slept in over a day:
Sunday morning. Packing done. Take shower. Get dressed. Wake moms up. Eat breakfast. Load up car. Hit road. Fall asleep. Arrive at airport, quite early at that. Unload car. Kiss, hug moms. Check in, clear security. No probs. Take 400m stroll thru O'Hare terminal to departure gate. Wait. Watch airport CNN. Starts snowing. Board plane. Snows harder. Plane delayed at gate. Snows even more. Plane delayed even more. Waiting, dozing off, wake up. Still parked at gate. Doze off again. Wake up, plane inches to runway. Still snowing, more delay to clear runway. Sit at runway for awhile. Finally take off almost 3 hours after scheduled departure time. Doze off again, but not before catching the first round of drinks and peanuts--it wouldn't be flying without the peanuts. Get the first meal. Hit the lavatory to brush chops. Grab standard issue pillow & blankie, go comatose for 6 hours. Wake up, flip on personal tv. The words "Finding Nemo" displayed on Channel 3. Looking forward to watching Nemo. Check back several times. No Nemo. Guess they couldn't find him. Ah well, listen to radio channels the rest of the flight. Get another snack/meal. Land in Tokyo (actually, airport is an hour away from Tokyo). No gate bridge, so we had to get off on the tarmac and take a shuttle bus to the terminal. Go thru customs. Get luggage. No problems. Buy train tickets. Catch express train from airport to Tokyo--had a nice little convo about Japanese culture and the U.S. economy with American businessman sitting next to me on the train. At one point, he was describing the racial demographics of his company's technical personnel; he used the term "WASP," which I thought was interesting. Arrive at Tokyo. Catch bullet train to Nagoya. Catch more Z's. Finally arrive at Nagoya. Catch commuter train to my home stop. Walk 10 minutes with heavy suitcase in tow. Arrive home Monday night. Job done.
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