So we flew out of Honolulu on Thursday morning. Well, afternoon.
We left Hawaii Kai at 11:00am for a 1:10pm flight. And there was plenty of time to spare. HNL is a very easy airport in most situations. We took a $36 Uber ride. We had difficulty fitting a single large bag and a stroller int he trunk of his Accord, but everything mostly went well. He was also a Chinese guy that knew only a few words of English. I've heard of those drivers from some of my passengers (I also drive with Uber & Lyft), but that was the extent of it. The car was completely silent. He didn't have the radio on for ambient sound. Aside from that, it was a very easy ride.
There were a bunch of people (a tourist bus) that were trying to get onto an Alaskan Airlines flight, but the line for Japan Airlines (JAL) was easy enough. My party was my wife, my 6 year old daughter, my 9 month old son and myself. All in all, we had 1 large bag for all of our shit, his stroller, 2 backpacks and a hand bag. We'll be staying at my wife's parents house, so we didn't need to bring a lot of shit. Oh yeah, we also brought car seats for both the 9 month old and a booster seat for my daughter.
When we got to the front of the JAL line and began our check in, we discovered our first problem of the day. My daughter's US passport has expired, so my wife left it at home. We also haven't even tried to get my son a US passport yet. That said, they are both American citizens. So when we checked in, it was real easy to go through. My wife gave the agent the 3 Japanese passports and my US passport. Then they asked how the kids were planning on getting back. We weren't sure what they meant, but it turns out, we should have brought something with us to prove US citizenship for both of them. Namely, their birth certificates. Whoops. We have a few options. get another Uber to hopefully RACE home and grab the BC's, then race back to the airport and pray to make the flight in time (it's' around 12:00 at this point for a 1:10 flight), or just go out there without issue and try and explain our way into the country when we return. At this point, we decided just to fly out. We'll send a letter to our friends with a house key and ask them to pick up the two BC's from our cabinet and fed ex them out to us.
The flight was a little long. We landed at 4:15pm Japan time. They're 5 hours behind Hawaii, but tomorrow. For example, right now it is 1:26pm in Hawaii on the 9th. Out here is 8:26am on the 10th. We had to quickly leave our plane and grab our stuff. We have a connecting flight from Narita (Japan's largest airport) to Niigata, the prefecture that my wife's family lives in. That was scheduled to depart at 5:35pm. After making our way through customs and collecting our luggage (they don't transfer luggage for you out there), we got onto a tram to head over to the other terminal at 5:10pm. We finally arrived there around 5:20pm and rushed to the other departure gate. Turns out they weren't even listing that this flight was ready. We had all of our luggage and were trying to get everything done. But the woman spent 5 minutes (as politely as possible) explaining to my wife that they close new people from entering a flight at the 20 minute mark before the flight takes off. So 5:15pm. We're out of luck. This was going to be a 1 hour flight, but now we need to take a train from Narita to Tokyo. That's a 1 hour train, then take a bullet train from Tokyo to Niigata. That's a 2 hour train. So if we're already killing lots of our rest time. Oh well.. As we were making our way to the first train, pulling the large bag that we brought, the wheel on the left side broke, and went rolling across the floor. Fuck, just what we need. I'm already in a lot of pain because my arthritis has been acting up on the flight. So I'm pretty miserable, and now I'm trying to walk and use this bag like a very painful crutch while also trying to push a stroller that's holding the baby seat and booster seat... This is fucking miserable.
We make it onto the train and sit down. It's nice to finally sit again. I'm really tired at this point, and Tyler, the 9 month old is acting up. He hasn't slept at all on the flight, even though we had ordered a bassinet seat for him on the plane. At the same time, my daughter is also miserable. She's extremely tired, and going from moody to crying at the drop of a hat. Fuck me. Oh well, she ends up passing out on the train. My wife is holding my son in one of those Kangaroo pouch things, and they both fall asleep, and I'm reading my Kindle. The train is mostly uneventful, except for my son screaming a bit early on.
When we arrive at Tokyo, we're all pretty much the walking dead. Everyone is exhausted, and we're just struggling to move. What's worse is it's a far walk to go from the Narita train out to the Niigata bullet train. And I'm having to fight the broken bag every step of the way. So fucking tired, and now I'm miserable also. Also, the plane completely dried out my sinuses, so now my nose is full of Triskets and my eyes are burning. Oh well, we fought it out and made it to the train. Then sat down for another ride. This ride was also uneventful. Everyone seemed to get a little sleep, myself included. Then when we arrived in Niigata, we turned on our phones again and tried to call Manami's mom at their house, then her dad in his car. Both times, it said that the line wasn't able to connect from a cell phone. Chalk that up to some added frustration. We were planning on my wife's dad being a the train station waiting for us. We made our way to the exit of the train station, and it sucked. Lots of steps and no elevators. We had to fight the stroller with baby seats & the luggage up and down all of them. Fortunately this college age Japanese girl helps me out with the stroller as we're going down some of the steps. I was really happy about that.
So we're walking around the train station for a good 30 minutes trying to locate Manami's dad, and we're completely out of luck. Everyone's tired, so we just decide to get a cab. There are spots for 3 types of cabs. Large, Medium and Small. We get in line for a large one, and a medium car pulls between two spots, completely blocking the large space from approaching. He sits there for a while, and a large car pulls up, can't get to us, so drives away. Mean while, this medium guy keeps looking at us, then saying no when we ask if he wants to drive us. At long last, he pulls away and we're waiting for another large car. Then suddenly, Manami's dad walks over. It seems that he was waiting for us at the other exit of the train station. And that side had elevators. Whatever, we weren't in the mood to hear that. But we made it to their house, took showers, and quickly went to bed. Miserable day complete.
