5/30 or 5/31...traveling back in time sure is bumpy!

At 6:30pm (Japan Time) on 5/30 our trip home began. Nothing like getting to the airport around 5 hours ahead of the flight time just to spend a lot of time sitting and waiting, and sitting and waiting some more. On my initial walk I found an observation deck over the tarmack, very interesting how busy it gets in the late night for international travel. The terminal came to life...lots of flights to Honolulu. Also a lot of duty free shopping going on...watch out kids, we were big spenders...900 yen on candy..."the candy" according to our travel group. Apparently we were doing something wrong since we didn't have gigantic bags to take onto the plane with us :) Other locations for international travel this evening included Kuala Lumpur (located in Malaysia) and Denpasar (in Indonesia).

And so the journey began...with bus rides to the airplane. Hanaeda doesn't have enough terminal space and there are several gates that have to board shuttle buses to be dropped off at the staircase to get onto the plane. There's a way to start the travel process! I noticed many, many passports for travelers from Thailand and a few from Japan and even fewer from the US. We settled in and got our snack and started to watch what I thought would be several movies over the 10 hour flight...it turned into one movie for me that I started, dozed off during, traded spots to have the window, slept some more and woke up to restart the same movie and watch the remainder of it. For a 10 hour flight, I was super unproductive but got far from great sleep!

Apparently traveling back in time, departed at 12:30am on 5/31 and arrived at 18:30 on 5/30, is a bumpy ride across the international dateline :) Quite a bit of turbulance along the way and then add in a bit of a lack of sleep, and experience a second sunset on Thursday. I'm beyond confused right now (I know...not different from any other time).

Getting back into the US was more intense than getting into Japan from our experience but all was very smooth regardless. In the midst of a 5 hour layover in Los Angeles it was about time I got some sleep...and I did so in the middle of the waiting area with my head under a seat because it was the darkest location in the place. Pretty bad when the cement floor is more comfortable than an airplane seat! Unfortunately the relaxing nap I got came to an ubrupt end when I thought I couldn't find my wallet and couldn't remember where I had put it (found it in my backpack). I would insert a picture of me sleeping on the floor of the airport but my mom didn't get one of me...she's nicer than me! Finally we boarded and it was the same style plane that we had taken from Tokyo to the US. Taking off on the red eye makes me wanna go around the cabin waking people up...if I can't sleep other people shouldn't either!!

Then the trip took us to the northern part of the US...Minneapolis for a one hour layover. Luckily it was only 2 gates away to get to Orlando! After being on large planes for the entire day of traveling it was strange to walk onto what is now considered a normal size plane. I was waiting for the turbulance to flip the plane over! Upon touchdown I got a voicemail saying that one of my bags had arrived on an earlier flight...I have a feeling my bag managed to get on to the red eye from LAX.

And finally....30 hours after we got the shuttle at Tokyo Disneyland, we were in Orlando and waiting on our ride. Next step...beating this round of jetlag.