Japan 2025 - A Travel Day

This is me officially attempting to be better about this on this trip. I feel years and eons behind in writing these but we’ll see. Did you know that I actually haven’t read any of the posts I’ve written. I may have skimmed once or twice, and maybe read a paragraph here or there, but I’d say about 99% of it I’ve never read. As I went through and wrote this though I definitely feel dryer and more to the point. I think I need to work on doing less business writing and adding more voice. I think I used to have less of a filter maybe? Anyway, yeah I never re-read these. I almost never even re-read or proof read as I’m going either. Its just a straight word vomit, send, and out of my brain. Someday I’ll go back.

Anyway, we’re in Japan! We began booking this trip in December 2024 knowing we were going for May 2025. This is technically our honeymoon, but who’s counting. We left home at 7:20 am Saturday May 17th with our first flight going from PDX to SEA and then SEA to NRT. At Seattle we always go to Manchu Wok because I have a weird thing about airport generic asian food at airports and also its way cheaper than some of the stuff in other gates. We flew out of S Gate and the only two food options there were both $22 minimum (indian and burgers). Sam and I didn’t want to spend $22 each on a burger so we took the tram thing back to Manchu Wok in I think A gate and it was I think $12 or $14 dollars and probably more food. I didn’t finish mine. 

The thing about long distance flights is that you just have to get through it. If you’ve signed up for it then suck it up and go. The flight to Japan was 10 hours and I more or less just planned to dissociate. I recall one time the kid behind me puked 3 hours in to a 9 hour flight and I’ve decided it really can’t get worse than that. Honestly the first 5 hours of the flight I was thinking, why do I dislike long flights? This is great, I can read, watch tv, listen to my audio book and just relax. They bring me hot food and take away the trash and I don’t even have to do the dishes or worry about anything because I can’t do anything anyway. However my knee doesn’t sit right because I can’t reach the floor and that actually bothered me the entire flight. They used to have these little kickstand type things to rest your feet on, that and adding 8 years to the last time I was in Japan and hello 30, now I have knee pain. I did have a first on this flight though and some dude fell over backwards like mini-passed out right next to us and everyone was in a tizzy over it. We were the left middle two seats, it went AB-aisle-CDEF-aisle-GH. And we were CD, this dude keeled over in the aisle between F and G and so we were close enough to be right next to it and far enough away to not be able to help (not that either of us would’ve been any help). He was totally lucid tho (and young like 20s) and the flight attendant helped him up and we saw him return to his seat unaided a few minutes later but yeah everyone thought he like had a heart attack (he didn’t) but I didn’t actually catch what happened to him. 

The first in flight meal I got a picture of had two types of fish and one was raw with this like grain and vegetable salad with this amazing kind of citrus almost like flavor. I will attempt to update pictures when we're back state side, its taking everything in me to just write these while traveling so pictures will have to wait. Everything was delicious and the fruit even tasted fresh. They also gave us miso and we should all be embarrassed in the US that the airplane miso was better than more if not all miso I’ve had in the US. They gave us icecream for dessert. I might hate flights, airports, and planes but man do I love the food on long flights. Both sam and I agreed that we would never usually eat fish on a plane, much less raw fish, but of course it was delicious and not an issue to our stomachs at all. 

Somewhere around hour 7 I started to really get tired to the point that my head hurt. We landed at 4pm Sunday in Tokyo which is roughly midnight. It got really bad for me on the plane but once we were off I was surprisingly fine. When we went to Europe in 2022 I thought I was going to die staying up that first day the jetlag was so bad. Sam was cool as a cucumber, per usual.  Once we were off the flight and on our feet my head cleared and my knee felt eons better. Somehow my multiple forced mini naps between hour 7-10 of the flight got me through till we made it to the Airbnb to pass out without issue. We passed out at the airbnb around 8pm Tokyo time (4am Pdx time) and I woke up the next day totally adjusted. I’d be proud but I truly didn’t do anything other than get lucky I think. 

We got through customs and immigration without a hitch. Honestly it was one of the fastest customs and immigrations lines I’ve ever been through. Customs in particular there was only 2 people in line in front of us. I was impressed. We got our suica cards and made it through to the Narita Express into Tokyo. That first train station is a ride. It prepares you for all thats to come.