June 12th - Saturday and June 13th - Sunday

We were up at three and left by four in the dark o' morning. Randy was along to take the car home. Thanks, Randy! Our flight to Toronto was to leave at 6:30, so we were nice and early. Good thing! Our Air Canada flight had been canceled! They wanted to have us fly so late that we would spend the night in Toronto and miss a whole day of our vacation! There was another party of four, a lovely family, who were in the same boat. Their desk agent found a way to put them on a Delta flight that would go to Vancouver and let us catch our original flight there. Our agent had said that wasn't possible. Funny, now it was possible! Anyway, we all got paperwork and were sent on to Delta, "around the corner and under a tree"!

After waiting in the Delta line for it to be our turn we were all send back to Air Canada to get a real ticket instead of the printout we were given. Another line. Yes, here are tickets to take back to Delta. The Delta folks were wonderful and gave us boarding passes both for this leg and the Air Canada one as well as making sure (we hope) that our luggage would go all the way to Tokyo

A word about our new friends. The dad's family came to the US from Japan a hundred years ago and he looks as though it were yesterday. The mom is from India and the kids, a boy and a girl, are a wonderful ethnic blend. They spent the past seven years living on a Navajo reservation and are on their way to meet friends from there who have six kids! They were quite freaked out about missing their connection.

Our Delta flight left at 8:30 so we had time to get breakfast while we waited. Betsy and I split a four-item platter of scrambled eggs, bacon, seasoned potatoes and a bagel with cream cheese. We saved the bagel for later. You never know when you will need an "emergency muffin"! Nick and Ginger got breakfast and salads to save for later, and two bananas!

The flight was lovely. Nick had booked an exit row originally and pointed that out during the whole debacle above. As a result we all four got exit row seats! What a treat! We watched "Invictus" which was a really good movie and had Diet Cokes and peanuts in mini-micro packets, tomato juice and Nick's salad! Thanks, Nick!

When we arrived in Vancouver it was an easy process to go through Canada's entry procedure and proceed to our gate. We saw our friends again and had another good laugh. Then there was the problem of Delta having shown us as "no shows" when we didn't board in Toronto! Seems that wasn't a problem, either, but we had to be sure!! Betsy wanted coffee so we went exploring and, oh dear, I succumbed to the A&W root beer float and, to make matters worse, a Teen Burger! Hey - I'm on vacation and I'm sure we're going to walk about a million miles in the next two weeks!

We've been assured that there will be food on this nine-hour trip to Tokyo! Boy did that turn out to be an understatement! There were to complete meals and all the drinks we could hold. This route actually worked out much better because the first leg was five hours and the second only nine. Having the flights broken up that way made it much easier.

The seat back monitors allowed us free access to movies, tv shows, news channels and LOTS of stuff. I watched Alice in Wonderland and Shutter Island as well as several Canadian short films that were delightful. The meals were beef and rice with a salad of chopped vegetables, roll, butter and a brownie for the first and chicken with rice or pasta with beef and fruit, roll and butter for the second. Quite tasty and the beverages included beer or wine! Did i mention we will jump ahead thirteen hours by the time we land?

We all managed varying amounts of sleep but were functional when we finally arrived in Norita Airport. Of course, the first thing is to claim our luggage. the first three are a breeze. then there's besty's. well, actually, there isn't betsy's. they were all checked in at the same time but somehow her's doesn't make all the transitions. the air canada people are very nice and we got through the whole claims process in about an hour. they promised to send it on to kyoto but we don't know how long that will take. good thing we'll be there for five days! We had a list of tasks to accomplish, including getting our Japan Rail passes, renting two cell phones in case we got into trouble, and to be able to contact Andy, getting cash and figuring out the train into tokyo. *I give up, the shift key is pretty far for my little finger and i'm giving up on capital letters until i am giving up on them on this keyboard* and I can't find the parentheses. anyway, everything went great except for the part where everyone's atm worked except minel. I think when they put the note on that I was going to Japan, they accidentally put a hold on my account. good thing i've got good friends!

Onward--we found the train and were able to reach andy to ask him to meet us at the station instead of the hostel. hooray! we found each other and he was able to guide us through the next stages of the journey. it is incredible how much of the language he has already picked up! I think I'll post this and start a new one, since i am so behind and it might be time to leave again!