Plane ride was super long as expected but not bad. I had brought basically every electronic device known to man and made sure we were on a row that had a power plug. Took me a few minutes to find it but for others who fly on American it is between the 2 seats and is a standard car charger adapter.

I also rigged up a way to hold my iPhone up on the seat in front of me and that worked great.

I spent most of my time watching Band of Brothers (7 episodes total) and I did actually sleep a decent amount early on in the flight. We were served 3 meals total: a chicken rice dish with sushi for a side, a turkey sandwich and pizza.

They were all edible and we had plenty of other snacks in our bags to keep up from getting hungry. We arrived at Narita airport at just before 1pm local time and went straight to passport control. My line nicely developed a computer problem when I reached the front of the line but after a short delay they moved me to another line and I went right through. They fingerprint and take your picture in Japan so that was interesting. When we got down to the customs area we immediately found our baggage claim and sure enough there was Becky’s giraffe (not brown cow!) print suitcase with mine following just behind. We breezed through customs, got a little money exchanged and headed over to terminal 1 to get the mobile phone I rented. Phone rental went very smoothly and we decided to go ahead and try and catch the earliest train we could instead of changing clothes there at the airport so we headed to the basement of terminal 1 and got our JR Rail passes and reserved seats for the trip to Iwakuni. This whole process was exactly as I had read about it and very easy. We headed to the JR station and after a few hiccups with not understanding the gate process (its a little different for Rail Pass holders) we got to our car and seats and kicked back and relaxed and watched the scenery go by. This train took us into Tokyo itself and to Shinagawa station where we changed to the Shinkansen (bullet train) headed to Osaka. In Osaka we were supposed to change to the train to Hiroshima so we got off the train and looked for the entry for Hiroshima and it was nowhere to be found. We had also planned to use the 30 minutes between trains to change since we hadn’t at the airport but needed to know where the next train was before doing that. We ended up finding one of the track workers and pointing vigorously at the ticket and he quickly understood we were lost and pointed us to track 20 where our train would depart from. We found a restroom on the way and I threw on some new clothes. We grabbed a couple of waters at a convenience store and headed to our train. On this train we had noticed our tickets indicated they were in a “silence” car and that turned out to be just what you would expect which made it a little fun figuring out where to get off. The other trains had all had announcements in English and Japanese letting you know the station but this one had no overhead announcements. This silence also led to a lot of nodding off by both of us as the day was finally catching up and the quiet rhythmic train was putting us to sleep. We managed to get off at Hiroshima and after a little confusion and asking another employee found that our train was on the platform we had arrived on so we headed to Shin-Iwakuni and called Steven to let him know we were on our way. It was rainy when we arrived and Steven picked us up shortly after we got to the station and took us back to the marine base. We got to see Iwakuni’s castle and famous bridge (I am too lazy to look up the name but we will go there in the next few days). Going through security was interesting certainly as you have to have a pass and show your passport but we went through without issue and got to their apartment. After catching up with everyone and winding down a little we checked in with a few people on e-mail or calling to let them know we arrived safely then we slept.

P.S. remember way more pics and videos over at https://s0kud0.smugmug.com/Travel/Japan-2010