Hello everyone. 🙂

First I want to thank you for subscribing to our blog. We are really excited to start this journey after months of preparation. The day is finally here and we are on our way to Japan to start the first leg of our journey. I created a new Travel section at the top of our site so you can follow our daily adventures around the world. Here you will find our daily updates of where we are and what we see.

Now that’s out of the way here is our first post of the trip.

5am…….

This morning we were out of the house at 5am to catch a ride with Kirk, Onisha’s dad. With only 3 hours of sleep we packed our things, loaded up the truck and headed out to LAX from Huntington Beach. We arrived at the airport 3 hours ahead of our departure to make sure we didn’t have any stress checking in and getting through security. Everything went smooth and we were able to take our time and even get some photos in before heading to our gate.

Once at the gate we charged our electronics and waited for boarding. All around us the tv monitors had CNN and the Malaysian Airlines mystery as their main topic.. Just what I wanted to see before boarding a flight traveling over the Pacific Ocean. Onisha already gets really nervous on planes and this was not going to help. Instead of paying attention to the tv she purchased a book on her iPad about Misty Copeland the first young African American in 20 years to be a soloist for American Ballet Theatre. Book Link: Life In Motion

After a short flight to San Fransisco we landed and then had to book it to another terminal to catch the International flight to Japan. As we made it to the international terminal we noticed how much nicer everything was. All of the stores and general gates were much bigger and nicer than in the domestic parts of the airport.

2pm…..

Our flight was originally set to take off at 1pm, but instead we sat in the plane for another hour waiting to take off. Typical of most flights these days. Then we we airborne once again. This time for 10 hours of babies crying and mothers changing diapers right next to us 2 to 3 times every hour. I kept telling myself that you have to get used to it since we will be traveling so much in the next year. The flight itself was not bad except one part that was turbulent.

6pm Japan Time – Narita Express…..

After a long flight and numb legs we made it to Narita airport. The next task was to get to Shibuya station. After about 20 minutes we finally located where to purchase our Express tickets to Shibuya station. One thing about Japanese train stations is that they can be very confusing for first timers. There are so many ways to get around Japan and all of them intersect with each other with thousands of people walking all over from one to another.

After arriving at Shibuya station we then had to find our next train to the local station of Aobadai where our host was to meet us and take us back to the apartment. Of course after being late on our flight and then running around lost trying to find what train to catch we ended up about 1hr and a half late to our final station.

11pm now….

We have arrived at our first accommodation in Japan and are excited to see whats out there tomorrow. It’s raining pretty hard here, but hopefully that will let up some so we go out and explore Japan. Stay tuned until our next post about our adventure.