We departed Vancouver at 1:30 (3:30 p.m. Winnipeg time), aboard Air Canada Flight 3, a near capacity 767, for our 10 hour flight. The flight was very uneventful, outside of overheating the entertainment (TV) system, which meant it was shut down midflight for a rest. Eve watched 3 movies, I watched one and a couple of TV shows and Haruna watched a couple of shows and slept quite a bit. The two meals we had, weren't bad, and they kept us hydrated for the entire trip. Everyone got a little sleep and then we arrived at Narita at about 15:35, local time (1:35 a.m. Winnipeg time) on Tuesday the 28th, 10 minutes ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, with the flu outbreak, our plane was temporarily quarantined for about 75 minutes, while we filled out some health forms and they took everyone's temperature with a scanning thermometer(looked something like a large digital camera). We all also had to wear medical masks, as we deplaned and worked our way through the terminal.
Clearing Customs and Immigration was very quick and painless. They barely looked at us, let alone any of our luggage, and we were through in a couple of minutes to pick up our luggage.
Due to the delay in arriving, we quickly wished Haruna goodbye about 5:30 p.m. local, as she rushed to a connecting flight to Fukuoka departing at 6 p.m. She had another 2 hour plane ride and she still needed to ride three hours on a bus to make her way home to Yamaguchi, in south west Japan.
A business associate of Eve's, Mr. Haru Yamaguchi, met us at the airport. He and his associate helped us determine which trains we needed to get to Tokyo Disneyland, as the delay of being quarantined, caused us to miss the last limousine shuttle to our hotel.
After getting our Japan Rail vouchers exchanged for passes (we did manage to get the spelling of our names changed before we left Vancouver), we started our adventure to make our way through the JR system to our hotel in Disneyland. After 2 hours of travel, a couple of train and line changes, we arrived at the Sheraton Tokyo Bay, no worse for wear. We did have our doubts along the way at where we were going, but ultimately, the directions Mr. Yamaguchi gave us were very good. The station personnel of the JR rail system were all very helpful with any of our questions, as most everything was only in Japanese.
Check out the high tech toilet in our room. The toilet seat is heated, and it has more controls and more functions than some TV's. We did eventually figure out how to flush it.
After checking in, we had a couple of drinks in the lounge, a little to eat, and called it a day at about 23:30 local time(9:30am Tuesday, Winnipeg time). Whew! 25 hour day, pillow to pillow!
View from hour hotel balcony, overlooking Tokyo Bay.
2025-02-09