Moving Day!
Well, it certainly feels real now. After all the work getting to this point, it was time to finally get on a plane and move. So we did.
The first leg of our trip was at 6 AM from Nashville to Los Angeles. Elsa and I got up at 3 AM and let the kids "sleep in" until 3:40. By 3:55, we were all loaded into the back of Bill and Karen's pickup truck and off to the airport. After some far too brief goodbyes, we were through security at Nashville and ready to start our journey!
The kids were amazing right off the bat. I figured they would start off groggy, but they seemed pretty excited about Japan. We had purchased them each a surprise Kindle Fire tablet loaded with their favorite PBS kids games as a way to help make them feel better about the trip, but with how excited they were it ended up being just a prize for being good dudes.
It didn't take too long for the lack of sleep to catch up with Miles and Calvin. Both passed out en route to Los Angeles.
With this being the second international trip in a 12 month period, Nissan booked us business class tickets for both legs of the trip. AT LAX, this meant we got access to the awesome AA Admirals Club/Flagship Lounge. We basically let these kids eat whatever they wanted, which resulted in Calvin having a chocolate croissant and freshly made vanilla french toast with whipped cream. Miles had eggs and a biscuit. Elsa had sushi - because apparently she couldn't wait until we got to Japan to indulge.
Soon after stuffing ourselves to the brim, it was time to board to Tokyo! This is where those business class seats really paid off. We each had our own pod that allows for the chair to recline all the way back until completely horizontal. Calvin enjoyed ice cream after a delicious meal while Miles and I watched the England vs Columbia World Cup match live! Drinks and snacks were plentiful. For the first time in my life, I both slept on a plane and didn't have aches in my bum when it was over. If you have the extra $10k+ per ticket to spend, this is definitely the way to travel!
We arrived at Haneda airport at about 2:00 PM local Tokyo time. Everybody was able to get a decent nap in so we all felt pretty good.
Getting through immigration and customs was pretty simple. We got our Japan residence cards right at the Visa check-point. Getting all of our luggage to the hotel was a little trickier. We had 6 checked bags, so we ended up using a delivery service to take some of them to the hotel for us rather than trying to get them all on the subway with the kids. It only cost about $65 USD; so definitely the right call. The baggage delivery counter doubled as the place to submit the Customs forms for all our other luggage coming (air and sea shipment). It took some time, but finally we were through. (Thank goodness for luggage carts!)
The line for the baggage delivery service.
Afterwards, we exchanged some US Dollars for Japanese Yen, loaded our PASMOs (the Japan subway system card) and got on a train. A quick twenty minutes later we were in Yokohama and checked-in at the Sheraton. (If you come to visit us, definitely try to fly into Haneda versus Narita if you can!) Overall, a very successful day of moving to Japan!
