We had two Tuesdays this week. There’s the one we had in Japan, and there’s the one we had in the US.

When you fly to Japan, you lose a day. We left early on a Wednesday morning and spent a total of 14 hours in the air, but we landed late Thursday. The international date line works both ways though, so when you come back you gain a day, i.e. we left late on Tuesday and we landed in LAX mid-day on Tuesday. This return trip is actually more challenging, at least it has been for me.

Japan Tuesday 

Tuesday was one of the clearest days while we were in town. Mid fifties and sunny. This was the view this morning from the hotel as the sun came up.

We headed to the Shinjuku Gardens for the morning, but first stopped by the bakery on the way to the train station. This bakery is droolingly irresistible. It’s so good. The breads and pastries are so good. It’s so tiny, and it smells so good, and it’s usually playing pop music that feels out of place. Katy Perry’s Dark Horse, to be specific.

We picked up a few things for breakfast and headed to the train. Once we reached the park we started looking for a place to sit down in the sun. It might have been a high of 55 yesterday in Tokyo, but it wasn’t that warm yet.

We found a tree with a stump that had concrete poured over it. There was a sign about this tree, like an informational sign not a “don’t sit here” sign. Apparently they didn’t want it to grow back, and it was a perfect spot to sit and eat.

The goods: one pastry of unknown origin, I think it had almonds, one blueberry muffin, and one quiche. The can is hot coffee that Travis got from one of the vending machines.

This was a really good start to the morning. I miss it that tree, but the fact that it’s in Japan gives us a reason to go back and makes it more valuable in a way.

From Shinjuku we headed to the hipster neighborhood of Harajuku. There were a few things that were really tempting, like this shirt:

It doesn’t entirely make sense, but I like that it says “discern.” I didn’t buy that though. Not enough liking that I’d actually wear it, and we had already found our stupendous eight-bit sunglasses instead. I love this picture.

Hawt.

From there, it was one more arcade stop in Shinjuku (this time we got the drums game, and there’s a video out there floating in the aether that will be linked here in a bit.) Travis got an espresso from his favorite place in Shinjuku.

Then back to the hotel to get the luggage, and we hopped a bus for the airport. Bus > Trains for this trip tot he airport. It would’ve been almost the same amount of money, but this way we didn’t have to haul five bags (smallish but still) throughout the Tokyo train system. Three cheers for the bus (and the bus driver, who navigated some seriously tight hotel parking lots to pick up other passengers.)

Then through Narita airport. Immigration, security, and this sign as we headed towards our gate: WE HOPE TO SEE YOU AGAIN.

Arigato gozaimasu, Japan, and likewise.

US Tuesday

Our US Tuesday started when we boarded the Dreamliner bound from Japan to LAX. No more Japanese characters on this plane, and unfortunately no Japanese airline service. Just good ol’ United here’s-your-beverage-now-turn-off-your-phone. We were excited about the Dreamliner, though. Ok, Travis was excited, I was more like, “Please don’t catch fire.” But hey, new plane, super big… then for no good reason I look up and I see kleenex stuffed into the cracks between the overhead bins right above my head. My immediate thought was that EWWWW someone shoved their kleenex there and that’s so gross, I’m calling the flight attendant. I showed the attendant the kleenex and she shrugged. “Yeah, sometimes the condensation from the air ducts drips down and sometimes it comes through the gaps. A passenger must have put those there.” She reached over me and pulled out the kleenex and walked away. Travis and I just looked at one another. Well… ok. So water drips down. That’s nothing we can’t live with, but… really? Dreamliner?

We forgot about this until about two minutes into takeoff. I love takeoffs. I was staring out the window lost in thought, and then about jumped out of my skin when a small stream of very cold water poured down on to my head from the very cracks formerly stuffed with kleenex. I jerked away from the window and startled Travis and several other passengers, who weren’t close enough to hear me tell Travis, “Dude, water! Feel my hair, it’s wet!” He thought I overreacted.

We landed in LAX nine flight hours later (or seventeen hours behind Japan, however most blows your mind.) We started packing up our stuff to leave the airplane, and suddenly the water was dripping down into Travis’s seat, onto his head and all over his shirt. Repeatedly. We tried stuffing the cracks above his head with the head cushion covers from the seats, to no avail. It kept finding new routes. The aerospace engineer in Travis kicked in and he started taking pictures to send to United. I doubt they’ll fix it, but the idea of doing that made us both feel better.

Then it was off through US immigration, checked bag pickup, US customs, checked bag drop off, and to our gates for Denver. We had to go through security again at LAX, and after Japan’s efficient security lines, LAX was, well, not efficient. But we got through it, got to the gate, got some food, got lined up to board, and realized upon scanning my boarding pass that we were booked on separate flights to Denver. Travis was on one leaving about 45 minutes earlier, and I was on another one. We’re not sure how this happened, because we booked the tickets at the same time to make sure we got the same flights, and we even had seats next to one another — just not on the same planes, apparently!

This is where United was awesome. Really. They moved Travis on my flight (the later one) for no charge and got us seats next to one another. When we landed in Denver, our checked bags had already arrived with the earlier flight (curious since my bag should’ve been with my flight, but ok) and were sitting to the side ready to go.

The moral of the story: bring towels, not fire extinguishers, if you’re on a 787.

First page in my passport with stuff in it!