Day 1 Japan Trip

We started our trip to Japan on Tuesday March 23 2010. Cory Fredrick, Joe Garcia and myself met up at the airport in SLC at 630 am hoping to buy zed fare tickets in All Nippon Airways from Tokyo to Sapporo. The Delta ticket agent looked and said we were not eligible for those zed fare tickets. We knew we could so we decided to just have her check us in for our flight from SLC to SFO to NRT. I had already listed for both these flights but Cory and Joe didn’t so the ticket agent gave them a little grief for using the first class line to list and activate, even though there wasn’t anybody in line. Once we did get checked in we decided to go down to our SkyWest gates and see if our agents could get us our zed fare tickets. Sure enough they could and we decided that the delta agent didn’t know how to do them. We then went to out gate and got on our flight to SFO. Once we got to SFO we went and found the international terminal and checked in for our flight to Tokyo. Just after we got checked in on of the ticket agents said that she might be able to get us our seats and she took our seat request cards and got us our seats 3 hours early. When she came back she said that she had one of us in business and 2 in coach and went ahead and out us all in business. I figured that I had the business seat because I actually listed for the flight myself and Cory and Joe had the delta agent in SLC list them and she didn’t list them for business just coach. As soon as we put our carry-ons away and sat down the flight attendants brought us champagne and dinner menus as we waited for the rest of the flight to finish boarding. We pushed back on-time at 115 and were on our way to Japan!! Once airborne and at a cruising altitude of 36,000 feet the flight attendants brought us our first round of our meal. I had the salad with oriental dressing and Tomato Florentine soup. The main dish consisted of fillet of beef with sweet potato fries. For dessert I had an ice cream sundae with strawberry and chocolate sauce and crushed peanuts. This all happened in the first hour or so of the flight. I then proceeded to put my feet up and sit back and relax and watch a few movies. I started watching Inglorious Bastards but dosed off towards the middle of the movie but I did wake up to catch the last half hour of it. I fell asleep for an hour or two and then watched the Invention of Lying and Men Who Stare at Goats. During the last hour of the flight we were served breakfast, even though it wasn’t even close to morning in Japan or in the USA. I had granola with honey, fresh fruit and a croissant. Once we landed and got through customs Cory had left his tickets for or next flight to Sapporo in the bathroom at customs and had to have someone escort him back to get them, luckily no one had picked them up. We then found the All Nippon counter and got checked in for the flight to Sapporo. Trying to go through security my backpack and skiboards wouldn’t fit through the x-ray because the restriction on carryon size is smaller than we have in the US so I had to go back and check my backpack. In Tokyo when we boarded the flight to Sapporo they first put us on a bus that took us to the plane. We got boarded up and took off. Once we got into Sapporo and got our luggage we found the subway to downtown but trying to figure out the map was a challenge until someone that spoke English told us where to go. Once we finally got to our stop we decided to walk to our hotel instead of paying for the other subway going towards it. We walked for a good mile or better and finally found the Ramada and had luckily gone down the correct street. Once we got checked in we went to the room which had four beds, a toilet room with beday and a shower room that had a bathtub and a shower but the shower was outside of the tub. The shower was really different, you sat on what looked like an upside down 5 gallon bucket with a hole in the top and had a small bucket under a faucet at your feet. You used the shower part of the faucet to rinse off then you lather up with the soap and shampoo they provided and then you filled the small bucket with water and dumped it on yourself to wash off the soap. Once we checked out the room we decided to go find something to eat. We went to a Mos Burger which was pretty good. We than walked around for a little bit and then decided to go back to the hotel and get some sleep since we were getting up early the next morning to go skiing