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Japan October 2004

Japan October 2004 Day 1-2: Los Angeles to Tokyo

October 21-22, 2004

Never in my life had I ever been to the same international destination in the same calendar year. Sure some of the Euro trips from the late 90’s were about a year from each other, but they were in the next calendar year. Earlier this year in August, Daniel found another ridiculously cheap airfare to go to Japan and immediately we got tickets for October. Daniel had been wanting to see the Halloween decor at the parks even before we went earlier this year so he was super excited. 

Along the way between August and October, Daniel and I had a bit of a falling out. For a long time, I did not think that we were actually going to take the trip together and I had looked at changing the dates of my trip to earlier in the month to go to Beijing instead to see the Jean-Michel Jarre concert. Thankfully though, we worked things out and our trip together was back on again. In the middle of our difficulties, I made contact with someone at work who knew people at Tokyo Disney Resort and arranged to meet up with someone who had worked on the new Buzz Lightyear attraction at the park. Since I was working on a similar attraction for Disneyland in California this was a priceless opportunity for me to get some insider knowledge about something I was going to work on next year. 

With everything settled, we planned our itinerary around the refurbishment calendar at the parks as well as the availability of my contact. We would follow the same basic schedule as before where we would have time in Tokyo, 4 days at the Tokyo Disney Resort, and then some Japan Rail passes to explore the rest of Japan. We were especially excited to visit Kyoto and Himeji since we were super into the castles that sit on top of hills. 

The day we departed, we were dropped off at LAX at Terminal 4 for our American Airlines flight to Tokyo. A big difference for us was instead of having to travel to San Jose for a connection to Tokyo, we were flying direct. Another big difference was that right before our trip, I purchased an iPod so I could listen to a lot more music than the limited number of CDs I brought for a Discman or listening to the limited onboard entertainment. Even though I didn’t have time to copy over all of my music, I still had more than enough for the flight. It really helped being able to fall asleep on the plane. In the middle of the flight, I lost one of the cosys for one of my ear picks while I was asleep. Thankfully, I recovered it on approach to Tokyo.

Arriving in Tokyo, it felt like we were salty old travelers. We remembered what to do based on Jonathan’s instructions from March. Well, that was the plan. We got off the plane and I was a bit overwhelmed. Things seemed like I remembered them a certain way, but they felt different. After some doubts, we were able to find the Narita Express train to take us directly to Shin-Nihombashi. Overall, it was way less confusing than before despite the moments of uncertainty in the beginning. For our hotel, we decided to once again stay at the Kazusaya as it still remained centrally located as well as familiar as to how to get to it. 

We made it to the Kazusaya late in the evening with no issues and tomorrow we will head out into Tokyo to find one of the cyber cafes I looked up to make sure that our contact is all set for our meeting next week. We also need to get our Tokyo Disney Resort tickets and see what else we can find. Also, bonus points to the weather. When we were here in March it was much cooler. Temps are in the high 60s and low 70sF which is way more comfortable.