The Force was with us...

After a ridiculously busy week, capped by a ridiculously busy day, Sumi and I found ourselves in a hotel room in Chicago waiting to get on the plane to Japan. I had flown back from New York this morning, stopped at work on my way back home, then sat in Memorial Day weekend traffic and crawled home, where the cleaning and packing resumed until it was 7pm, and we had to get going, With a quick goodbye to the cats, we were on the road.

A welcome, uneventful drive later, we were checked in and ready to pass out, which occurred promptly. Our flight wasn't until 5:30 the next evening, so we spent the following morning in the breakfast area (all you can eat make-your-own-waffles!) working and I managed to finish most of my grading (!) before we had to catch the shuttle.

At the airport, we got checked in and still had some time, so we grabbed a sandwich at one of the pubs in gate area and had to listen to some loud person brag to his friends about drinking, Las Vegas, drinking, famous people he says he knew, drinking. I didn't like hm very much. But I did finish all of my grading and Sumi got some work done, as well, so we're about 95% on vacation!

So, ANA has themed planes. Since 1998, they've had numerous Pokémon planes (though they were largely domestic, flights, so we never flew on one).

Well, they have a new theme going now: Star Wars. We flew on one of the BB-8 themed planes.

There are also R2-D2 and C-3PO themed ones

This was on the back of every seat

There was also a big, stuffed Yoda greeting us as we walked in. We couldn't get a picture without holding up the boarding process, which would not have gone over well. The flight was also uneventful, and 13 hours later, we landed in Haneda for the first time. It is a much smaller airport, which was great, in that there was almost no crowd. Immigration took about 2 minutes, customs about 1. A few train rides and a walk and we were back at hotel Toukaisou in Asakusa! We shipped out bikes up to our starting point for this trip, the temple at Osorezan, so we have a few days before it will arrive. Not sure what I'll do with the bonus day in Tokyo.

Sumi has a plan already:

It is like this in every direction.