Travel Day 1

That was the longest stinking travel day ever.

We left Atlanta at 6:30am, got to Toronto by 8, and then waited in around in the terminal for the connecting flight at 2:00pm. Toronto's airport prided itself with the pronouncement that it was the "Most Improved Airport In The World"...

and while the decor was great, the WiFi worked for approximately 20 minutes, and there was precious little to choose from for dining and entertainment.

We ate at Coyote Jacks where we had the most delicious fast food burgers ever:

Meghan might be loving this burger...

So, we waited what seemed like forever, and finally got on the plane to Tokyo. The movie and TV show selection was different than what we looked up before the trip which was slightly disappointing, but we entertained ourselves while trying to sleep on the plane. Several people didn't quite understand that leaving open the window shades affected EVERYONE on the plane, not just their row, which didn't help the sleeping situation which was already difficult due to not being able to lean our seats back too far. Needless to say, Meghan and I were quite jealous of the first class fully-reclining seat/bed things. Jealous enough to spend almost double on airline tickets? Maybe.

We got to the airport and through immigration and customs, noting all of the crazy chibi cartoon signs for what we should be doing, and got our JR Passes for the trains. Despite the fiasco with the name on Meghan's passport (which led us on a crazy run to the travel agency all the way across town at home to get the name changed on the JR Pass exchange order - Meghan's passport still has her maiden name) and our terror that the kind of gank fix the travel agency performed and the fairly lame letter of explaination that we didn't end up needing, the ticketing agent didn't even question it at all.

The train ride from the airport to the station near our hotel was fairly nice - really clean and comfortable seats with power at each one and a good amount of leg space. The scenery was really interesting - we were impressed with how dense all of the trees were. We were also surprised by how many rice fields we saw along the way:

One of MANY rice fields along the tracks to Tokyo

We got off at the station near our hotel, and immediately ran into a problem - we didn't write down the name of the main road in English. We stood around looking confusedly around at the corners until I decided to go back into the train station and talk to the ticketing agents for directions. I asked the guy if he spoke English (in Japanese), and he didn't respond too confidently, but he helped to explain which road was which, and after consulting a public map on the road, we made it to the hotel.

It's crazy nice for how little we paid (especially considering we're talking about Tokyo here). The room isn't overly large, but it's very nicely furnished, it's clean, it's quiet, and has plenty of nice ammenities.

We got settled in and went downstairs to the Italian/Pizza restaurant that was part of the hotel. OMG you guys. The pizza was amazing. I would put it somewhere between Vingenzo's and Varasano's in Georgia - the only thing we could find wrong with it was that it was slightly too soft in the middle. It had great flavor, and the crust had perfect char.

So that's about it. Meghan's already asleep, having not been able to sleep as well as I did on the plane. Alarm is set for 7 tomorrow morning. Good night all!