We're in Tokyo!

We did it! We are in Japan &, although long & tiring, the trip was about as uneventful as it could have been. Whew! Yhe picturre above is Brendan during our 2-hour layover in Chicago. He & Rufus are snoozing a bit because Brendan woke up (& therefore, so did we) at 2:00 am Wednesday morning! As I'm writing this, I've been awake for nearly 31 hours. Yes, I'm crazy to still be up (Brendan & Charlie have been asleep for over an hour) but I promised Tomoko I'd call her at 10:00 pm Tokyo time to figure out where we're meeting tomorrow for our trip to the Ghibli museum.

This was our first view of the area around Tokyo, photo taken by Brendan in the window seat :)

As I mentioned, it was a loooong trip. The Chicago to Tokyo part was 12 hours. None of us has ever been on a plane for so long, but then, we've never flown halfway around the world, either :) It was more than 6000 miles from Chicago to Tokyo. There was a cool video map that you could follow at your seat, to see exactly where the plane was. It actually was what lulled Brendan to sleep (finally) about 8 hours into the flight. He got about 3 hours of sleep, which was better than Charlie or I did. I was too uncomfortable to do more than listen to space music (channel 4 :) & sone out. The toughest part of the flight was probably hours 6-8, but from the point of view of "Brendan's mom", it was small potatoes. Brendan needed someone to play or read with him for those 2 solid hours (Charlie & I changed seats so that he could take that shift, bless him :) but he was hardly bothered at all by tics & never even came clost to meltdown the whole trip. Pretty neat!!

And this was another cool photo of the countryside around Tokyo, also taken by Brendan.

So far, all fo the advanced planning really made things go smoothly. Charlie had researched how to get from the airport to the apartment building in Roppongi where we are staying (I can see the Tokyo Tower, a replica of the Eiffel Tower, right ourside the window as I type- I'll try to get a picturre tomorrow). It was a 2-stage trip, taking a bus from the airport to a big hotel & then catching a taxi at the hotel for a less-than-a-mile trip to the "apaato". After moving in & regrouping, we walked to the 7-11 around the corner to buy ramen for dinner & buns & stuff for breakfast. We'll get more sophisticated about meals as we catch up on our sleep :)

Many, many thanks to all who posted kind wishes in the comments section before we left. I felt like I was halfway to Japan, flying on your good thoughts! More tomorrow...