It seems strange that in order to get to the Far East, you have to go west. Well, I suppose it proves that the world is round.

There was no other way of looking at it. We absolutely needed 4 suitcases. I was able to remove several items, but then I found more stuff that we absolutely had to have. So I rearranged the suitcase contents so that 3 cases weighed 48 lbs and 1 weighed 43, and declared that we were ready to cruise.

It was raining when we left home, so we had to put our cases in garbage bags before we placed them in the back of our neighbors truck. Also, because of the rain on top of our snow covered driveway, the driveway became quite like a luge ice track, adding to the excitement of actually leaving home.

We do not have garbage collection in our part of the world, so you have to haul all of your garbage to the dumpsters, a 20-minute drive away. Usually when we leave on vacation we stop by the dumpsters to off load our garbage before heading to the airport. Luckily I had done this earlier in the day. As we headed off with the garbage bag covered cases in the truck, it struck me that had we stopped at the dumpsters, there was a remote possibility that we could have thrown one of the garbage bag covered cases into the dumpster, and ended up checking a garbage bag full of trash to Tokyo. That would have given the TSA guys something to think about.

Our first 2 flights went well, but our first challenge was in San Diego where we had a very tight connection. We had to go to the Japan Airlines check in desk to get our international boarding passes. They were not happy with my passport number. The number hasn’t changed since I obtained the passport several years ago, so it was hard to work out what the problem was. Finally, they were OK with me leaving the country, so we dashed to security. We were unable to use the TSA Pre Check line because we had international boarding passes, so we had to wait forever in the general queue. Finally we were able to get our bags X-Rayed, and low and behold, mine was removed for further scrutiny. In order to reduce the weight of our checked luggage I had removed Brian’s 7-week supply of protein bars from a suitcase, and placed them in my carry on bag. Well, they caused quite a stir. The TSA agent was very taken by the fact that they were low carb, gluten free, high protein, chocolate fudge bars, and wanted to discuss them with me at length. Not because they were likely to cause our plane to crash, but because of his own dietary concerns. It was all quite ridiculous. In the end he put the several boxes back in my bag, and I was free to run to catch our plane.

Well as it turned out our plane was delayed! So now we had time to spare. We headed to the lounge to relax, and I ordered a glass of sparkling wine. Would you believe it – it came out of a can! I had never heard of such a thing before, but I suppose it does make sense if you are supplying sparkling wine by the glass. However, they do need to work on the taste. It was really quite nasty.

Finally our plane arrived and off we set. The 12-hour flight actually went quite quickly. We don’t have broadcast TV at home ever since I ran over the dish receiver several years ago, so I use long distance flights to catch up on my favorite sitcoms. Well they didn’t have 30 Rock, which was not too surprising, but then they also didn’t have The Big Bang Theory. What they did have in the comedy section was “The Wonderful World of Kittens”. I thought this was a strange title for a comedy, but I am a cat lover, and was thinking it must be some kind of satirical British show, but no, it was a very serious program on fluffy felines. It was totally bizarre and I was transfixed by it, so much that I nearly missed dinner. It was extremely weird. However, it did make the time go by quickly. When it was over I had fun pushing the little pad that made the windows go darker or lighter. It was like magic. No more pulling down the shades on new fancy planes, you can adjust how light or how dark you want your little window to be (4 different levels of shade) by merely pushing on a pad. I was totally in awe. Next thing I knew, we landed in Tokyo. Yay, the adventure begins!