Today we flew to Japan!

Today we flew to Japan! Harrison and I started off our trip early today. My dad took us to the airport around 3am as our flight from Seattle to LA left at 5am. It was hard getting up since we stayed up late packing and making last minute arrangements for our trip. We both agreed that we wouldn't feel like we were truly on vacation until we reached our final destination for the day: Niseko.

Bye Seattle!

We arrived in LA a little after 7am and proceeded to our next flight. We walked to our next gate in the international terminal at LAX and checked in with the desk lady.

Arriving at LAX

Singapore Airlines!

 

We boarded around 8:30 and got seated in our seats. Luckily the flight was not that full so we had the whole row to ourselves! We took off and began our 11.5 hour flight to Tokyo. Overall it was a pretty good flight. We spent most of the flight watching movies, sleeping, or eating.

We were fed a lot. They gave us these nice menus and we got to choose our meals. We also got free wine! I'm unsure if was because the flight wasn't very full or the flight attendants were super attentive, but they just kept giving us food, water and/or juice. Once I got up to go to the bathroom and asked for water, and came back with a sandwich and Hershey chocolate bar.

The menu

 

After a long flight we finally arrived in Tokyo. Going through customs wasn't too bad, and we were able to easily check our bags back in for our next flight to Hokkaido. Right now we are waiting to board our next flight to Sapporo. We've posted up in front of a TV and we have a few hours to kill. We are basically the only people in the ANA domestic flight gate area.

TV exercises!

 

One thing I've noticed is that my Japanese has improved a lot since the last time I was in Japan. I was able to make a bus reservation over the phone, talk to the customs agent, check us into our flight to Sapporo, and make a phone call to our hotel. Thinking back to my time traveling with my friend Matt in Norway, whenever I talk to someone when traveling abroad the first thing I always ask is if they speak English. Sadly so far on this trip, whenever I ask that questions the response is "ちょっとだけ" or "only a little." Actually one person straight up told me no. However it seems I'm managing well enough now for both of us, and I'm sure this only helps my language skills.

Soon our little area began to fill up with people and we were getting closer to our departure time. The planes were parked a bit away so we had to take a bus to the plane. The flight from Tokyo to Sapporo is a little over an hour. Harrison slept most of the way, while I just sat there and nodded off a few times, but we finally made it to Sapporo!

We gathered our things and met up with our taxi driver. Due to some complications we had to taxi to our hotel instead of taking a resort bus. However after traveling all day it was kind of nice to have a private van. We have been traveling now for over 24 hours and are still not at our final destination. It is a long drive from the airport to Niseko, but we enjoyed it. I only wish it had been light out so I could have taken pictures.

From what I can tell, the scenery must be amazing during the day. Hopefully I'll be able to get some good pictures on our way back. But the long drive did give me time to update my blog post for the day.  We still haven't gotten to our hotel yet but when we do I know we'll both sleep well tonight. Day 1 is almost over and I'm glad we won't have to travel this much in one day for the rest of our trip.

We finally made it to our hotel, but I'm too exhausted to update anymore.

Daily Step Count: 9,273
Total Step Count: 9,273