On the first day of my month-long trip to Japan, I went to bed about 11:00PM Friday, Sept 30th, and woke up at 2:00AM on Saturday, Oct 1st being unable to get much sleep due to excitement and stress of making sure I hadn’t forgotten or missed anything.

Clearly the start of a very long day.

I flew out from Spokane, WA at 6:00AM and landed in Portland, OR approximately 1 hour later. Stayed for a layover of about 3 hours, and then flew for another hour starting at 10:30AM from Portland to Vancouver, BC, CA.

I can’t say that I was impressed with the Air Canada or Vancouver Intl Airport staff due to their apparent rudeness, but there were definitely interesting things to see and experience in my first time leaving the US and seeing a major international airport beyond Sea-Tac which I’d only experienced once back when I was 18.

After another 2 1/2 hour layover or so in Vancouver, we started our 10-hour long flight on Japan Airlines across the beautiful, but pretty featureless, Pacific Ocean.

I was quite impressed with the staff and flight on the Boeing 787 “Dreamliner”. The seats all had their own USB power plug, touch-screen video screens, as well as wired remote control, and a large selection of shows, movies, and videos. Headphones were issued to each passenger along with a small pillow, and the cool “self-tinting” windows, instead of window shade was an interesting difference. I was disappointed to see that the features did not include a universal power plug for things like a laptop that appeared in the specs listed on the JAL website, but that didn’t detract to heavily from my experience overall.

The longest leg of the journey certainly felt slow-going.

After landing at around 4:30PM local time and going through immigration and customs, I was able to meet up with my cousin’s husband, who was waiting for me, and together we made our way back to meet up with everyone else and start on the journey of going back home to where we were all staying, which took roughly another 2-3 hours of driving.

I’ve personally never been to the south-eastern part of the US, but I’ve heard it can be pretty muggy and humid in areas, and my first day/evening here was quite the introduction into hot/humid/tropical-like climates. Definitely not lacking for moisture, or heat.

Along the way we stopped at a highway/freeway rest area which contained some stores including a local fast food chain called “Mos Burger” (Japan’s equivalent of McDonald’s) and we all had a little something to eat. Not all, but many of Japan’s rest areas actually have stores and shops in them where you can buy food or drinks and other items, which is definitely different from US rest areas which are typically just places to stop and use a bathroom and maybe have something to eat that you brought with you, or if you’re lucky buy something from a vending machine.

So after a 28-hour (maybe more as I lost track) day, with approximately 1 hour of sleep on the flight toward the end and 3 hours the previous night, I was pretty much dead to the world when we reached “home” that evening.