{"id":326,"date":"2006-07-03T02:39:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-03T10:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=326"},"modified":"2024-03-02T11:29:11","modified_gmt":"2024-03-02T18:29:11","slug":"day-one-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=326","title":{"rendered":"Day one: travel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(Update<\/strong><\/em>: I've uploaded travel photos<\/a>) I got a nice surprise for the start of my trip. The cheapest way to the airport is to use a shuttle van, but I find they're too much of a hassle because they stop and pick up others it increases the travel time. Rather than using a taxi, I've found that the \"executive car services\" only cost a few bucks more. So on Friday night I opened the yellow pages and picked out one of them. Told them I needed a car at 4am for the airport. So on Friday morning when I step out the front door, there's a limo waiting! Same charge as for the sedan. I guess it was easier to schedule things that way for them. Regardless, it was a nice way to start the trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The flight left Seattle on-time at 6am. We arrived at San Francisco<\/a> a few minutes early. When United ticketed me in Seattle, they could only get me a seat through to the Narita airport<\/a> in Tokyo. Since I had plenty of time at San Fran (4 hour layover), I headed over to the ANA<\/a> ticket counter to see if they could get me the seat assignment for the last Tokyo\/Fukuoka<\/a> leg. Turns out it was still too early, and the flight was not yet open for seat assignments. But they were able to switch my middle seat to a window seat. I sat down in some chairs nearby. I was surprised to see the lady from the ticket counter coming over to me a few minutes later. Turns out somehow we had gotten that last window seat while another passenger was in the process of taking it. I guess we were so fast that even though they had started before, it still showed as open and we finished first. She apologized, and gave me the opportunity to keep the seat, but asked if I'd be willing to take another. There was a different middle seat that was much better than most middles, because this middle was next to a seat they reserve crew use. Usually the crew rarely use this type of seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the lady at the ticket counter said, the crew seat was only occupied for maybe 30 minutes once in the entire flight. The plane was a 777<\/a> which is the first time I've flown on one. The business class was certainly better than economy, but it was the older style business class. I'd been hoping for something more up-to-date. The flight itself was fine. It was a little over 9 hours but the time moved along well. I watched Glory Road<\/em><\/a> and Ice Age 2<\/em><\/a>. They were not great, but they certainly passed the time. I'd recommend Glory Road<\/em> over Ice Age 2<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We got into Tokyo Narita on-time. No problem for the transfer since it was a 3 hour layover. It was a brand-new terminal that had just opened in June, so it was still nice and shiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The time-difference and lack of sleep finally caught up with me on the 2 hour flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka. I was trying to stay awake for as much of the trip as possible so I'd be able to fall asleep that night. I'd been up for about 22 hours at that point, with just a few hours napping on the cross-Pacific leg. But on the last leg to Fukuoka I couldn't really stay awake, and dozed for most of the flight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We got into Fukuoka on-time. Got down to my luggage and picked it up quickly. So quickly in fact that Joe & Gwyn still hadn't made it to the airport. So I waited around out in the passenger pick-up area for 20 minutes, and admired the neon light show right outside the airport. Then it was an 1 1\/2 hour drive to Sasebo<\/a>. We got to Joe & Gwyn's apartment<\/a> around 10:30pm local time, and got to bed at 11:30 or so. By that point I'd been up for over 26 hours with just some napping, so I had no problems getting to sleep despite the time difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Update: I've uploaded travel photos) I got a nice surprise for the start of my trip. The cheapest way to the airport is to use a shuttle van, but I find they're too much of a hassle because they stop and pick up others it Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan2006"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1402,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions\/1402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}