Lee is a master at blocking out long and extended airplane flights, having had so much practice over the decades he has been flying to Japan. It's a good thing, believe me, that he can block out those long, lo-o-ong, lo-o-o-ong hours in the air or else he's unlikely ever to make the trek again!
The nineteen-plus hours "on the road" this time around included an hour on a CTA Blue Line train from Oak Park to O'Hare, two hours awaiting takeoff, thirteen and one-half hours in the air, one hour going through immigration and customs, another hour in the airport picking up cellphones and yen and a train ticket to Ueno, and finally a bit over an hour on the Keisei Skytrain and the Ginza and Hanzomon subway lines to the Grand Arc Hanzomon Hotel overlooking the imperial palace gardens in central Tokyo.
The view out my hotel window makes it all seem worthwhile (and allows that welcoming amnesia to set in even more quickly than usual).
There were, to be sure, a few hiccups along the way. It took awhile to find an ATM that "worked" although Lee may have been asking for too large a withdrawal. Finally (at the third ATM) he got enough yen to keep himself going for a day or two at least. His search for the Mobal cellphone pickup point also proved a challenge until he realized he was in Terminal 2 and needed to be in Terminal 1. Other than that, all went well although being on the road for more than nineteen hours is still no picnic!
The rental MiFi "hot spot" he found awaiting him at the hotel is great: allowing him to be on line all the time everywhere!
He will look forward to meeting up with Sean and Ted Sunday evening in Osaka (after a good night's sleep). The Narita configuration has changed dramatically but they should be able to figure transferring over to the flight into Kansai easily enough - just a lot more walking involved than was the case on Lee's remembered earlier trips.
The nineteen-plus hours "on the road" this time around included an hour on a CTA Blue Line train from Oak Park to O'Hare, two hours awaiting takeoff, thirteen and one-half hours in the air, one hour going through immigration and customs, another hour in the airport picking up cellphones and yen and a train ticket to Ueno, and finally a bit over an hour on the Keisei Skytrain and the Ginza and Hanzomon subway lines to the Grand Arc Hanzomon Hotel overlooking the imperial palace gardens in central Tokyo.
The view out my hotel window makes it all seem worthwhile (and allows that welcoming amnesia to set in even more quickly than usual).
There were, to be sure, a few hiccups along the way. It took awhile to find an ATM that "worked" although Lee may have been asking for too large a withdrawal. Finally (at the third ATM) he got enough yen to keep himself going for a day or two at least. His search for the Mobal cellphone pickup point also proved a challenge until he realized he was in Terminal 2 and needed to be in Terminal 1. Other than that, all went well although being on the road for more than nineteen hours is still no picnic!
The rental MiFi "hot spot" he found awaiting him at the hotel is great: allowing him to be on line all the time everywhere!
He will look forward to meeting up with Sean and Ted Sunday evening in Osaka (after a good night's sleep). The Narita configuration has changed dramatically but they should be able to figure transferring over to the flight into Kansai easily enough - just a lot more walking involved than was the case on Lee's remembered earlier trips.
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