We made it!

 In years past we drove to Chicago and parked at a hotel, then took a shuttle to the airport. There were two problems with that

1. Getting a shuttle BACK to the hotel after the trip was almost always a royal pain and took the better part of an hour.
2. One of us would then have to drive home 2 hours while severely jet-lagged

So on our last trip to the Maldives we decided to try taking a bus to the airport, instead. Other than the ice storm/blizzard/sub-zero temps, it worked rather well so we booked with CoachUSA and left the park and ride at 6:00 this morning. The seats on the bus...let's just say I am now prepared for Japan after that ride. My knees almost fit. That said, the bus was not full at all so we were able to spread out to mitigate my lack of dwarfism. The ride itself was nice and quiet and we arrived early enough to...have to wait for the ANA ticket counter to open.

The ANA employees do this thing when they start work that is just so Japanese (even though most of them are not, at least in O'Hare). At exactly 8:45, the door opens and they march, single file, to their workstations. They come out in the correct order, so no one is breaking the line, then they pull out these spray bottles and begin disinfecting their workstations. They do this and other cleaning (of just their spots) for about 5 minutes. Then there's some kind of signal and they all start working.

The flight itself, other than being long (13 hours), was mostly quiet. Early on there were some very chatty teenagers so I decided to listen to a little bit on music to drown them out and maybe take a nap. ANA has some interesting musical selections

Spoiler: There was no yelling

It was mostly pretty bland new-age guitar and piano with some bird sounds added. I was rather disappointed at the lack of yelling in Best Yell Songs, too.

ANA has one of those interactive map apps that shows you the airplane from different angles with information about the speed, ETA, etc. It also had a rather odd idea of how shadows work. 

The imaginary route line has it's own shadow. Or chemtrails.

Hey, I wonder what Sumi is watch...oh...

We were greeted by a number of celebrities as we got off the plane and made our way to immigration

We rolled into our hotel at about 6. It's located in the heart of Ueno which has as its mascot a panda. everything in the entire neighborhood is panda themed.

We were tired but pretty hungry. The flight had food and we ate it, but it wasn't really enough for 20 hours worth of travel. We started by heading up to Ueno Station to get some ramen, but the line was very long. This is normal in Japan but we were too tired to stand in line for 30+ minutes to eat. So we took a walk doen AmeyaYokocho (America Alley) which is several alleys actually full of shops and open air bars. It was loud and all the food looked either wet, fishy, or both. 

I mean, at least TRY to make it look like a pizza from Chicago...

Not once, not twice, but THREE times...

So tired and desperate, we trudged down the street....

NO JUDGING!!!!

I will note this meal does not count towards the actual CoCo Curry totals as we have not started our trip yet. 

So, finally full and now practically falling asleep while walking we walked back to the hotel and collapsed. Tomorrow is going to be a relaxing day of traveling to Nikko, where we'll start our biking on Wednesday.

おやすみなさい