On our way!

Our flight was uneventful but long.  The three legs included a stop at Dallas (a perfectly acceptable airport.  Our gates were close together, although we wandered a bit to find breakfast, and then a little more to find the McDonald’s in the terminal, which is the only place in DFW to buy a Diet Coke (rather than Pepsi products).  I could have started my Diet Coke weaning early, but I didn’t.

Our next stop was LAX (Terminal 4).  Again, our gates were conveniently located, but I was surprised to discover that LAX is, well, a pit.  I would never have guessed it to be a major airport.  There were insufficient places to charge one’s devices (and nowhere to sit near those few places), few places to sit in the gate area, few places to eat (and the Burger King was slow and out of Coke—poor Stan).  There were few places to sit near those few places to eat, and the bathrooms smelled bad.  I talked to Brett on the phone and told him that Terminal 4 was a pit—he told me it was just like Terminals 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6!

And then we boarded our flight to Tokyo.  It was almost unbelievable to me that we were headed to Japan.  Jennica and I sat together, and Stan sat across the aisle.  We had acquired snacks at LAX (not a total waste of a stop), but we didn’t make much progress through them, except for the Nutter Butter Bites.  For the first few hours, I don’t think the flight attendants were still a minute—drinks, hot towels, food, and more bevers.  At that point, all the windows went down, the lights were dimmed, and many people (including Stan and Jennica) did a lot of sleeping.  I was wide awake—it was mid-afternoon to me and I wasn’t tired at all.  I read on my phone, listened to music, talked to Jennica when she was awake, watched The Lorax, and watched the flight progress on the video screen.  I somehow missed the crossing of the International Date Line, but noted as the difference between “LA time” and “Current time” changed—one time zone at a time.  Fortunately, everything was marked in English as well as Japanese.  I read somewhere that it wasn’t good on long flights to watch the flight progress, but I enjoyed it—each hour brought us closer to Tokyo!  I guess it might be less uplifting if I’d been counting the hours left in the flight, but all I could think was that we’d soon be in Tokyo!