Day 0: Traveling to Japan

We took Alaska airlines to LAX from BWI, which sucked to drive for an hour that early in the morning. We did get to see an awesome sunrise on the drive up at least. The six-hour flight to LAX was a little rough with little sleep. And then we were stuck on the plane circling around because the gate was occupied by a late flight–apparently the whole electronic boarding system went down, causing delays. So our long layover disappeared and we couldn’t make a pit stop to LA for Din Tai Fung :[. Instead we got Umami burger at LAX.

We then took Singapore airlines and that was a pretty bomb flight despite the lack of sleep and severely confusing my body with the time zone changes. Got to re-watch Spiderverse, which was still amazing the second time around, and also got to watch Kung Fu League and Glass. Kung Fu League was ridiculous. Glass was a legit good movie even thought I didn’t see Split. Overall, the service on Singapore Airlines was great. Surprised by the dinner and lunch meals, and loved how often the flight attendants came by with snacks and drinks. But the air just seriously dehydrated my mucous membranes. I will definitely be wearing some of those masks on the way back.

Landed in Japan around 7pm local time! Although we felt like complete zombies after being on planes for so long. Had to activate the JR Rail Pass, get our Narita Express tickets to Shinagawa Station in Tokyo as well as bullet train tickets to Nagoya (because the lines didn’t go to all the way to Kyoto that late), and get the pocket wifi. We then took a pooping break and I decided buy something from the vending machine with one of our Suica cards!! Whatever this Jelly drink is, it was soooo good. You shake it to break up the jelly inside it and then drink it! It was finished before we got of the Narita Express.

We got to Shinagawa station and was able to find the track for our Hikari shinkansen to Nagoya pretty quickly (we only had like 16 minutes to transfer). Once we were on the bullet train, I passed out pretty hard. Once we got to Nagoya, our hotel was pretty close by. We stayed at Choukou Hotel which was a badly needed night on a bed after almost 22 hours on planes with a 5 hours layover–basically we hadn’t slept on a bed in over 24 hours.
The receptionist didn’t speak too much English but did speak Chinese so we managed to check-in. The room itself was everything we need for somewhere we were only going to be sleeping at for six hours. The bed was massive so that was a plus! Otherwise, shared toilets and showers on each floor plus a communal sink.