Sayonara USA

Here's a picture of us in the Atlanta airport ready for our flight to Japan. Our flight left around 10:15 a.m. and we arrived early so we could return our rental car. We each had two suitcases as well as carry-ons and I was amazed that there wasn't a shuttle bus to get us from the rental car drop off into the terminal. We had to walk with all our luggage up several floors to catch a train that dropped us at the baggage claim area of the terminal. As we walked I kept seeing pieces of my suitcase tire falling off. I was a little worried I'd be dragging my suitcase by the time we got to check-in. Doing all that walking with all our luggage was one of the hardest parts of the whole trip. We were worn out before we even got started. We were thrilled to see we both had TSA pre-check notations on our tickets which allowed us to speed up the check-in process.

Our flight to Chicago was about two hours long and we had to rush through the terminal to find the gate for our next flight. (more walking) It was already boarding when we got there so we barely had time to stretch before we were back on a plane for the long flight from Chicago to Tokyo. Our seats weren't together on this flight.We had the food serving station between our seats so we couldn't even see each other as we flew. We both ended up in the middle seat of sets of three. It made it difficult to stretch out our feet or find a comfortable sleeping position.I tried to stand up whenever the girl next to me stood so that I could stretch a little bit. The plane was a 747 double decker with about 11 seats across a row. There were movies or TV shows playing on the monitors the entire flight and they fed us two meals. The flight time for this flight was about 13 hours total. We both tried not to sleep too much so that we could survive jet lag a little easier. After we exited we had to fill out customs paperwork and then find our luggage and walk through customs with it. They then took our luggage cart and put the luggage back on our flight to Okinawa.

Our last flight from Tokyo to Okinawa was about three hours. This plane had plenty of open seats and I was able to find an open row of five seats to lay across and sleep for most of the flight. Russ stayed awake and ordered what he thought was an apple juice but it turned out to be a chicken broth. It was a great introduction back into the world of guessing what you're actually getting when you can't read the writing on the packages. He said it was actually very good. I was glad I slept through that part.

We got to Okinawa at about 8:30 p.m. last night and Russ's sponsor and his boss were both waiting for us to give us a ride to the base. We checked into the TLF (temporary living facility) and were settled into our room by about 10 p.m. We had at this time been traveling for about 27 hours straight. I was wide awake when we first arrived. After about 2 weeks of living out of suitcases I was ready to get unpacked and settle in before sleeping. It didn't take us long to feel tired though so we were able to go to bed at normal Okinawa sleeping time. That allowed us to instantly be on their schedule which made jet lag almost non-existent. It was dark when we drove to the base so we're looking forward to exploring a little bit today.
It feels good to finally be here after all these months of planning for the move. Since this is our second time living in Japan it feels very comfortable to be back. I have no doubt we will enjoy our time here.

The Sign in the backround says "Welcome to Okinawa"

All our luggage