By Angie
April 1, 2023
We set off around 5:40 am from the Tiny House in Zephyrhills. We were hoping to make it to the hotel in 24 hours. We were close.
Our flight to Chicago was easy. We spent about thirty minutes in the United Polaris lounge for a little bite of lunch and some water.
We boarded our flight to Haneda. It was a 12 1/2 hour flight. We booked Polaris business class which was awesome. We had great lie flat seats, slippers, two meals, and a good size TV. I watching Ticket to Paradise, Girls' Trip, Notting Hill, and two episodes of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I slept about 6 hours. My favorite was the make your own sundae cart.
Landing was easy. It took about an hour to get through customs and immigration. I completed all the paperwork in advance online. I had screenshot the immigration and customs QR codes, but didn't screenshot the quarantine page that showed they had approved our vaccines. They had a lot of people helping you figure it out. We were pulled to the side until we could get wifi up and running on our phones to pull up the page. We then got into a very long winding line, but it kept moving.
Our bag was waiting for us. We had to go to another kiosk to confirm our Customs paperwork and then we headed out. I pre-booked a Meet and Greet service to help us exchange our rail passes and wifi. You can rent a hotspot that works all over Japan. That was easy. The line for the wifi was about 30 minutes. Our greeter took Glenn to get into the Rail pass exchange line. After we waited about an hour in the rail pass line, we decided to give up. It was going to be at least another hour in line plus an hour to navigate the train plus a 15 minute walk in the now dark. We grabbed a taxi and were at the Kimpton Shinjuku in 40 minutes. Check in was easy. We were so thankful that the hotel clerk spoke English. I'm always ashamed when we travel. So many people learn English and I cannot speak another language. Our room is really nice.
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