Seattle to Fukuoka

Travel across the International Date Line (IDL) is confusing. I'm typing this post on Thursday morning while I have WiFi at the hotel. We left Seattle Monday morning, traveled acrosss the IDL to Tokyo (Narita) arriving Wednesday afternoon about 1500 after a ten-hour flight, cleared customs and immigration then caught the connecting flight to Fukuoka, arriving a little before eight pm.

We flew on a 777-300 from SeaTac. On this long flight ANA had a more comfortable cabin setup than most airlines I've flown. The seat configuration in coach is 2-4-3 port to starboard with a small break between the middle seats in the four seat middle section. This allows a little wider seat and the space from the front of one seat to the back of the next (pitch) is about six inches more than usual. The extra knee room is nice but it's even more important because of a new (to me) seat reclining method. The back of the seat is fixed in place but the seat slides forward with the lower portion of the back cushion following to give the comfortable substitute for a reclining back. I liked this design since I didn't have to worry about the person in the seat in front of me reclining back into my lunch. This design also allows beverage holders to be mounted on the back of the seat and the bottom of the tray table helping to prevent the too often spilled drink.

After we cleared customs and Immigration we caught our flight to Fukuoka. This was a 737 with the usual seat spacing designed for usually smaller Asians so the seats were narrower and my knees were almost touching the seat in front. Fortunately it was only a two hour flight so we survived. In fact I even caught a few winks.

A short bus ride after we claimed our baggage and we were at our hotel in Fukuoka, the Nikko Hotel Fukuoka.  Checked in, had a western style dinner and was asleep not long after my head hit the pillow.

On the last couple trips across several time zones I've started using melatononin to help ease the jet lag. It seems to work for me. Last night I woke a few times but dropped right back into a restful sleep despite the 17-hour time difference from Seattle.

This morning we had the usual Japanese hotel style breakfast buffet. Typically they feature a wide selection of Japanese and western style items so this morning I started with the usual stout coffee then had rice, miso soup, vegetable soup, mackeral, dried seaweed, pickles and green tea then finished up with a selection of fresh fruits and some bread pudding with strawberry sauce. Should last me til lunch.

The Nikko Hotel is a first class hotel with the usual selection of accessories in the bath including bar soaps, body shampoo, hair shampoo, toothbrush and paste, safety razors and shaving gel, Q-tips, disposable hair brush and comb, shower cap, makeup remover, cleansing foam, bath salts and "ladies set." It also has a heated rectangle in the mirror right in front of the sink so even though the wall-to-wall mirror steams up there is a clear spot right where you need it.

Another difference from American hotels is the sense of safety. We were instructed to put our bags in the hall outside our room by eight so we put ours out a little after seven when we went to breakfast. There were already other bags from our group out there and no one seems to worry about some bad guy stealing one.

We are headed for Beppu today. I've had a problem trying to transfer photos from my phone and camera to the tablet so I could add them to each post. I'll work on that some more today although it seems I need to be connected to WiFi to get the transfer protocol to work via blue tooth. High technology is tough to keep up with, especially by an old timer like me. I must say it is a wonder to be able to post these comments to my blog from halfway around the world.