Arrived Safe in Japan

After a grueling 27 hour journey, we've arrived safely in Japan! I am typing this from the Osaka airport, as we wait to check in for our flight down to Fukuoka.

The 27 hours wasn't without some excitement... we made it up to Seattle on our 6 a.m. flight and enjoyed a couple lovely quiet hours in the United lounge, and then boarded our flight to Honolulu at 9:30. And there we sat, for 40 minutes, as the technicians tried to figure out why our plane was having problems...! In a very hot, completely packed, and gasoline-smelling plane.

As a result, our schedule was turned upside down. Originally, we were supposed to arrive in Honolulu with one hour to spare before our flight to Osaka. Due to the delay, we missed that flight.

So, the helpful Alaskan Airlines crew began working on re-routing us. It was quite exciting - we've never had to be re-routed due to plane trouble before. At first, they wanted to send us East, instead of West, on a 35-hour almost-circumnavigation of the globe... to Minneapolis, then Amsterdam, and then Japan!?! We politely told them that was nuts, and so we eventually were booked into a flight to Incheon, in South Korea, and then Osaka, arriving 2 hours after our original flight.

I think we know the Seattle Airport really well, as we visited just about every branch of it that day.

The Delta flight to Incheon was quite pleasant - really nice movie screens in each seat, good meals, and they even fed us ice cream. (Have you ever had ice cream on a flight before? I haven't.) And loads and loads of water, which was great.

The excitement began again when we arrived in Osaka, as we weren't sure that our 2 checked bags had made it through the kerfuffle safely. We had most of our essential items in our carry-on bags, but due to a lot of scuba gear, we still had to check 2 bags. Devlin's backpack made it to Osaka, fortunately, but not our green Rick Steves' bag with our buoyancy-control devices, hoods, booties, and gloves.

The Korean Air folks were very helpful in tracking things down, and they called us twice this morning at our Osaka hotel. It looks like we will get the bag in Fukuoka on the 5th, provided everything goes well along the way. If not, it will reach us within a week in Ishigaki, our final destination for our scuba trip. However, it might take a week to get to Ishigaki...due to Typhoon Phanfone.

In any case, we are pretty sure we can rent the missing gear in Ishigaki for diving there.

We were pretty much like zombies last night, but we're feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed today. I'm starting to feel like I'm in "travel-mode" again, although my Italian still is getting mixed into my Japanese in my head. :P  Onwards, and we will update again soon! :)