Day Three - Tokyo Arrival

Day 3 – Tokyo Arrival

Konnichiwa (kon-ni-chi-wa) Hello,

Yesterday was another long day. We left our hotel to go to the San Francisco Airport at 9:45 AM. It didn’t take long to get there, check our luggage and go through security. We had to wait until a little after 1:00 PM to board our plane. Finally, shortly after 2:00 we had take off. There were 100 Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund educators on this plane. 100 had flown out on an earlier flight.

We flew up the west coast of the U.S. and Canada, across the Aleutian Islands and over the Bering Sea. I am still wondering why we did not fly straight over the Pacific Ocean. It seems like that would have been faster, but I’m sure the pilots know a lot more about flying a big airplane than I do. The flight was very smooth – all 11 hours and 5,300 miles of it!

We flew between altitudes of 34,000-37,000 feet and with ground speeds averaging around 510 miles per hour. The outside air temperature at these altitudes was between -41 and -60 degrees Farenheit. Cold!

Although I didn’t have a window seat, I occasionally peaked over a neighbor’s shoulder to see what it was like outside. It was very bright and sunny, but we were above a layer of clouds and couldn’t see anything except interesting poofs of puffball clouds.

We crossed over the international dateline. I think I was expecting daylight to change to nighttime, but there was no visible indication that we had crossed over and lost an entire day. The time change between Montana and Tokyo is 17 hours. So, when you are having breakfast, I’m probably about to go to sleep.

On the flight I read (Three Cups of Tea) and visited with other teachers. There are two other people on this trip from Montana. One is Sue Johnson from Phillipsburg and the other is Brian Suttle from Browning.

After arriving at Narita Airport, we went through customs and the boarded buses that took us to the Prince Hotel in downtown Tokyo. The Japanese have everything precisely scheduled and amazingly enough we arrived at our hotel exactly when they said we would. Five minutes after finding my room we all met downstairs and some volunteer Japanese university students took us in small groups on a short walk to downtown to get something to eat.

Today we have a sightseeing tour around Tokyo and later see a traditional Japanese theater performance.

I haven’t been sleeping much. I’m wide awake right now, but the clock says it is 2 in the morning. Well, I’ll try to get a little sleep before the day truly begins. Talk to you again soon.