In Tokyo

Took a longtime to figure out how to post this note. Everything was in Japanese. Apparently Google read my Internet Service Provider as being in Japan and then sent only Japanese characters to me. Finally figured it out. Hope that when we do get to Thailand Google will still be in English.

We are at the Tokyo Haneda airport. An airport we never knew existed until tonight. A quite a nice airport. This mornings flight from Kansas City to Chicago went well, and we arrived on time in Chicago. Then however things started going awry. First the flight to Tokyo was delayed half an hour. Then it was delayed more. Then we boarded and t was delayed more. We left 2 1/2 hours late. Since we only had an hour to make our connecting flight to Bangkok, by the time we arrived in Tokyo, it had left without us, and about twenty other people headed for Bangkok. As we got off the plane we were sent to the customer service tables set up just for our flight to Tokyo. We found the right table and were told that there was a flight leaving in five hours from the Haneda Airport in Downtown Tokyo and a bus would take us there. But, first we had to claim our luggage. So, the bags were claimed and we walked in mass to our waiting bus. After a seventy-five minute bus ride we checked in at the All Nippon counter for our boarding passes. We received them and are now waiting for our after midnight flight. We will be arriving in Bangkok 7 1/2 hours late, making it a 32 hour flight from Kansas City to Bangkok.

The flight from Chicago was bumpy going over Canada. On two separate occasions the pilot announced "Flight Attendants, take your seats" and then we bounced. After Canada, the flight remained calm. The plane was an old one. The televisions were on the top of the cabin. Every other flight we've taken for the past few years had the televisions in the seat backs.

Also, as we were taxiing from the gate in Chicago we noticed a lot of flashing lights at the end of one of the runways. When we looked closer it was the airport fire department and buses. We watched as a commuter plane landed and the parade of fire fighting vehicles moved out, following the small plane.