April 1, 2014

April 1, 2014

We are up way before dawn to catch our 5am flight to Los Angeles. After a long layover at LAX, we board the ten-hour flight to Japan. Japan is on my bucket list but I know very few people who have traveled there for pleasure. Mostly because I think Americans know so little about the country. Japan had a long period of isolation from the outside world and that attitude still seems to pervade the country. Japan does little to promote tourism to Americans. Add in the inscrutable Oriental writing system and we are in the dark. Our goal is to shine some light on the country. I have some lingering trepidation because we signed up for an independent tour. A travel agent provided the itinerary and made our hotel accommodations. But after that we are on our own in making our way around the country.

Even though the plane ride is the part of travel I don't look forward to, I am happy to find we are boarding one of the new Boeing 787 Dreamliners. This is the new graphite composite plane. Besides being much more fuel-efficient, it has larger passenger windows (oddly blue tinted) and more comfortable cabin pressure. My summer intern job with McDonnell Douglas 35 years ago was involved with gluing carbon components together for fighter jets. I can’t believe it took this long for the technology to make it to commercial aviation.