Who would have thought I was going to spend two weeks with my adult children in a far away land like Japan. Three of them brought their spouses and my Jessie brought her partner Dayna Smith from Boise Idaho.
It all started during the Christmas holidays of 2022. My oldest son and his wife Brittany have wanted to visit Japan for some time and since my oldest daughter lives in Northern Japan we started planning.
There were obstacles that we had to get over like GW not being able to go. His lungs can no longer handle air plane flights so I just wanted to stay home with him. He encouraged me to go since I wasn’t getting any younger and it would be a good bonding experience with our grown children. After months of planning ( thanks to Brittany & Jacob) we all boarded on a flight June 11th 2023 heading to Tokyo from the Seattle airport. It was a nine hour flight and most of the time lights were out. All you could see was everyone’s screen monitors which gave a little light during our flight.
To my surprise there was no turbulence which was nice and our Delta Comfort Plus seats were pretty comfortable. That’s until the last two hours I started to get pretty restless. The food was a nice distraction and I was able to stand up and stretch for a short time. I just kept watching movies to keep my mind off of my very stiff legs and hind end.
When we landed at the Tokyo airport everybody seemed anxious to get off the plane and start walking! I felt a little overwhelmed since none of us could sleep on the plane. We had to hurry and get through customs so we could catch our domestic flight to the city of Osaka. Jacob also needed to go purchase a wireless Wi-Fi at a different area of the airport so we could use our phones to get around on all the trains and subways. Stress was starting to creep in. All I can say is I prayed silently on our trip many times!
We made it to the other side of Tokyo’s airport and luckily our flight was delayed so we could slow down and rest. I’ve decided I really like flying and during this particular flight I sat next to a lively tiny 50 year old Japanese woman by the name of Uca. She had never married and had spent most of her career life giving tours around the world for Japanese citizens. Some places she has toured many times like Europe and America.
For the hour and a half of flying to Osaka Uca showed me some of her recent tours like Turkey and Greece. She was very friendly and with her thick accent Uca was happy to share with me about her personal life as well. What a nice beginning of meeting a very nice person who explained a little about her culture and other cultures for 90 minutes.
Once we landed in Osaka I could really feel the humidity but the weather must have only been in the high seventies so we were not too uncomfortable. We finally met up with Jenny and JJ who flew in from Misawa. I was so happy to hug them since I hadn’t seen them in person since last summer..
Then our walking journey began. I was determined to keep up with my family since they were all under 35. Thank goodness we had Wi-Fi. After two train rides and walking for about an hour with our carry-on luggage we made it to our first Airbnb.
