Arrival Sapporo

 

Time Zone Travel.

[ Tokyo from the airplane with Mt. Fuji on the horizon line ]

Well, we left for the Raleigh airport at 6:00 in the morning on Wednesday and arrived in Sapporo at 10:00 on Thursday evening. It was a long day but with delights and adventures. From Raleigh we flew to Chicago O'Hare, then to Tokyo Haneda and finally to the New Chitose airport in Sapporo. Several little charms along the way:

[ Tom's fresh kicks and L.L. Bean bag! ]

[ Rice cracker airplane snacks ]

[ A view of Alaska from the air ]

Our travels went quite smoothly until we arrived in Tokyo Haneda Airport and realized we had to take our checked luggage from customs (seven LARGE checked bags), take them out to the street, flag down a shuttle bus, load the bags on the shuttle bus, and travel several miles to a different terminal at the airport. I will say that we had excellent team work to get this done, despite running on 14 hours of travel at this point. We had to muscle our way onto the front of the shuttle bus in an assembly line type fashion of passing the luggage between us and piling it onto the seats in the front of the bus (my first moments of real shame as an American with too much luggage!!); I just accepted the buffoonery of the moment and tossed luggage in a heap on the front seats without making eye contact with passengers on the bus who were looking on in horror. 

[ Tom preparing to muster at the shuttle stop ]

Once we arrived at Terminal 1 the madness continued. We had to squeeze our piled up carts of luggage into a VERY SMALL elevator while maneuvering through hoards of travelers with dainty suitcases. When we arrived at the gate we had missed our flight! I did some yoga breathing. 

[ Making the best of the situation ]

The Japan Airlines staff were very kind and helpful and were able to book us onto the next flight. We were very relieved to offload our ridiculous amount of luggage at least until our final destination in Hokkaido. We were rewarded by the presence of this little doggy at the checkin gate. 

[ A potential friend for Casper ]

Once in Sapporo we piled the luggage into two cabs and arrived at the ANA Crown Plaza hotel in Chitose and settled into very nice rooms by eleven o'clock pm. I think I was dreaming by 11:01.