Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Getting to Japan

Choosing a flight to Japan from the US isn't too difficult. Basically you have to weigh travel time and layovers against departure date and cost. Our scenario brings an additional factor, that of three children under the age of five years old.

Normally, we would have opted for the 11 hour flight straight to Tokyo, and then take the bullet train to Nagoya. However, with children, we decided to try a more round-about route, with shorter legs, longer layovers and (as a bonus) a overall lower cost.

We live in Everett, Washington, but both of our immediate families are in Southern California. Anna has been down there for a few weeks, and I'm leaving in a few days to meet her. After a short visit with friends and family, we're flying out of LAX to Hawaii, spending the night, then to Guam, spending the night again, and finally to Nagoya. The layovers are around 14 hours each, and combined with the time-zone and date-line changes, we'll be spending about three days in transit, but four days on the calendar.

The up-side is that the jet-lag should be more manageable when taken in smaller chunks, and we'll get to spend a few hours sight-seeing in the tropics! If it doesn't work out so well, we can always take the more direct route back... but at this point, returning to the States seems like such a distant milestone that it's not even worth considering.

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