First Day! We FINALLY made it to Japan!

Day 1! You would think that it should be rather eventless..... but this has to be one of my top airport travel experiences. Yup, it made the list.

So it started pretty harmless in the morning of July 4th, traveling to LAX by Lyft.

The Lyft guy told us a lot about how to travel smart to LAX! First, go in from the north side instead of south side, because there is much less people that way (I haven't quite figured out my north from south yet...). Second, if you're departing, go to the arrival gates; if you are picking someone up, go to the departure. Because LAX always has all the planes arriving and departing at the same time, it's wayyyy too crowded if you go with the crowd... so you want to do the opposite. He said that in order for shuttles and drivers for Uber/Lyft like that to get the LAX certification, they have to actually follow that driving rule. So we made it to LAX with plenty of time to spare.

But this is about to go down real fast.

So our plane to Incheon, South Korea was supposed to leave at 12:40pm, but because of connecting flight issues, they delayed boarding until 1:10pm. In reality, we didn't actually leave until 2:10pm. That's 1 hour and 30 minutes behind schedule! So thus the domino effect.

When we got to Incheon, it was 6:17pm local time, and our connecting flight to Japan was at 6:50pm, boarding at 6:25pm. The plane taxied in the airport until 6:40pm! Joyce, now equipped with her "I don't take any crap" level-up, we pushed all these people aside because we told them we can't be late for our connecting flight. In Incheon, to get on a connecting flight, you HAVE to go through customs again! So we got through customs and RAN to our gate.... like really really ran. I haven't ran that much for a lonnnnnggg time........ when we got to the gate, they were already doing final boarding and we were one of the last ones (beside a family who was also on that LAX flight) getting on. We were really sweating by that time.

Finally, arrived in Narita Airport.... and they don't have our luggage. Of course not right?! If we had to run to get on the flight, how were they able to sort out our luggage for the transfer even quicker than we ran?! So Joyce, again equipped with her level-up, flagged down an Asiana person and was trying to figure out the situation. The lady was trying to explain to us in English, but was having some trouble... so I told Joyce to talk to her in Japanese, and they were communicating fine! And then I looked at the lady's name, which seemed Korean, so I asked her if she speaks Korean, and she said, of course! She's Korean! Then we spoke a bit in Korean. Ah, the power of languages!

Long story short, they don't have our luggages and won't have them until tomorrow at 11:10am. We told them that we're gonna be flying back to Incheon at 8:30pm tomorrow, so there's no need for the luggages and if they can just keep it in Incheon? They said yes, but I'll let you guys know tomorrow if we actually get it.....

So we arrived in our hotel with just the bare necessities that we packed in our backpack. Thank God that we packed well enough... with the stuff we need to get through at least another day!

Finally at the hotel now..... we miss Japan! Such a nice place! Haha.... lots of drinks!

And here is the Narita Airport Rest Hotel, which is just <5 minutes driving from the airport (free shuttle service!)

And the wifi is so interesting.... to find the password for the wifi in the room, you have to turn on the TV and look at the password on the top right of the screen. It's like a treasure hunt..

Alright, just a few more things before I finish a super long Day 1.

LAX has this puppy service for people to pet and feel more relaxed. This dog is SUPER BIG.... the man said it's a Irish Wolfhound. Bred to hunt wolves. o_o

I like the food on the plane.... quite good! Although the plane ride itself was bad for me. My butt hurt so much for sitting for almost 13+ hours, with nowhere to walk. Oh! And did I mention that although Joyce and I booked our flight in March, they actually split us apart?! We are one row in front of each other, both sitting in the middle seat. We tried to ask the people next to us if they can switch with us, and a young kid sitting next to Joyce said that his family actually got split apart too, where his mom and sister are sitting together with a lady they don't know. And that lady was also split apart from her group. My goodness. I think not sitting next to the person you know made the plane ride even more unbearable. Bleh.

This was steak lunch right after we left. Not bad. It had smoked salmon salad!

This was chicken pasta, which I thought was very good!

As for in-flight entertainment, I watched Greatest Showman (finally) and Jumanji (students' recommendation). We were literally counting the hours left on the plane by how many movies we already watched. Being so bored... I challenged Tetris again and got the highest score for my seat. Again.

It's already 11:40pm on July 5th now. When you travel to Asia, you really feel like you lost an entire day on the plane...... But I like this leaving at noon in Los Angeles, arriving by night time in Asia kind of travel because since I don't sleep much on the plane, I am super tired when I arrive, which means I should be able to adjust my jetlag really quickly. 

Alright, getting up at 6am to catch a train into Tokyo! Thank God this hotel has kimonos for us to wear... or else we'd be wearing the same clothes for 3 days in a row....

Till tomorrow!