5:30 am mountain — left the apartment in Denver.
6 am mountain — parked at the airport. Bags!

9:47 Pacific: hello LAX. Smoggggggy.

11:15 am Pacific: just boarded the ANA flight. It was the most efficient flight boarding I have ever experienced. And everyone was happy about it. And I have in-seat power. Word.

For the record, this is how we looked before we took off:

Somewhere around hour 9 of 12, where I gave up on consistent verb tense:
The cabin lights dimmed and then went out entirely about two hours into the flight. All windows had to close — designated naptime. We are about nine hours into the flight now, and I have watched half a season of Anthony Bourdain checking out food in Asia. He started in Tokyo and has gone through Japan, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Bugs, snakes, all kinds of things. Beating cobra heart anyone? The lights start to come up in the cabin, so I jump at the chance to open my window without a very polite but firm correction from the ANA flight attendants. I see ocean, clouds, and suddenly I just want to go home to the familiar. I involuntarily start counting how many days until that happens. Then I stop and a well-timed narration segment from Bourdain’s Cambodia episode pipes through my headphones: “Life at its best and most vivid is a mixture of fear and excitement.” And after watching these episodes in Southeast Asia, I’m reminded that Japan is far more familiar than other places.

5:37 pm japan time:
Landed, immigration’d, baggage claimed, customs done, train ticket bought, and now we’re crashed on the floor outside of the Starbucks in the train station.

WOOOOOO!!!

I’m so glad some signs are in English. 😛