Japan Trip: Part 1 (getting there and Tokyo)

We've been back now for about a week and our sleep schedules are finally returning to normal (thank goodness!). We had a great time and the traveling (planes, trains, etc.) went much better than I was expecting. It was fun to see Olivia experience as a 3 year old this time around...much different than when she was 4 months old (see my post about her first trip here). Both kids were troopers.

I want to document our whole trip, if for nothing else than my own memory. So..here it goes.

We dragged the kids from the warm beds around 5 am the morning we left (Thursday, January 9), stuck them in the car, and headed to the airport. Not surprisingly, once Olivia was awake, she did not go back to sleep for a LONG time after this. Our flight from Dayton to Dallas went off without a hitch and then we had a couple hour layover in Dallas before we boarded the plane to Japan.

Unfortunately, we ended up sitting on the plane for the next two hours before they decided the mechanical problem with the plane could not be fixed and we all had to get off and hope that they could find another plane for us to use later in the day. This was disappointing, especially after we had all already been awake for so long. I just wanted to get the journey started, not prolong it. Fortunately, a few hours later (about 5 hours after we were originally supposed to leave) we boarded a new plane and took off. The kids did really well and they both even slept a good bit (about 6-7 hrs). It was almost 10:00 pm Friday the 10th when we arrived in Japan. After waiting for our luggage, we took a quick cab ride to the airport hotel and slept for about 6 hours.

After some breakfast at the hotel, we checked out and took the hotel shuttle back to the airport to catch the Narita Express, which we took to Tokyo. This was our first train ride of the trip and thankfully, Olivia did great. We stored our luggage in lockers at the train station and headed out to see the Imperial Palace. It was a beautiful day. After a few hours in Tokyo, we headed back to the station and caught another train for Yokohama. Once there, we checked into our hotel, had dinner (tonkatsu sandwiches and super delicious strawberries from the grocery store in the basement of our hotel), and headed to bed.