Genthar.net

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10/1

Well, I'm here at the San Diego Airport - Commuter Terminal, and there is a wireless signal that is designated for guests to access...only problem is that it requires a username and password which I obviously don't have. You'd think since they went to the trouble of offering guest access that they'd put up a webpage for information on how to log in. Even if it means you need to sign up and pay, that information is better than just a password login screen with no info.

Ah well. Not a big deal since I'm really just killing time until my flight is ready to board.
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A 45 minute noisy turboprop ride and we're at LAX. A quick bus ride, and a short walk and we're at the Bradley International Terminal. It's amazingly busy for some reason, I'm guessing there's a couple of major flights leaving at about the same time. We stop for a quick bite to eat, then head through security and onto the flight.
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10/2

Well, we arrived in Japan after a fairly nasty 12 hour flight. Apparently the jet stream was fairly strong this time, so instead of a 10.5-11 hour flight, ours was slowed, still for the most part it was a nice smooth flight. We got a decent set of seats along the bulkhead. Gives us extra leg room but, for people with a large rear-end (such as me) it was an extremely uncomfortable, more-narrow-than-normal seat that I needed a shoehorn to get in and out of. The food was decent, and the traditional inflight movies have been converted to several choices that loop continuously that you can choose from and view on a small personal LCD screen attached to your chair. I watched Batman Returns which I hadn't seen in the theatre. Once we hit the ground, it was more or less non-stop, quarantine, immigration, baggage (ok, long stop here waiting for our luggage to come out) one of us got their luggage right away, the rest of us had to wait until more or less the end for ours to appear), then customs. Off to the train station to get the rail-passes exchanged. The ticket agent gave us tickets for the next train...which leaves in 3 minutes...so run-run-run to the platform and hop on the train.
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After arriving at Kyoto Station, we walked through the station to the New Miyako Hotel out of the west exit. After checking in, we all struggled to stay awake until a little later just so we can start adjusting to the time shift, but, it was a losing battle, and soon we were all crashed out around 9:30pm local time, which puts us at around 5:30am PDT. Sorry no pictures yet, but with all of the running around we didn't really have time to stop for snapshots. I promise once we start the real touring, there will be pictures.

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10/3

Well, at 2:30 am local time, I popped awake which is about 7:30 am PDT, so my body clock is of course was telling me to wake up. I know the others also were having the same problems. We all had a bit of trouble trying to stay asleep at that point, but we all tried to sleep until morning local time.