I am in Japan... by the time any of you read this I’ll be in China and unfortunately we are skipping the Korea section due to a little snafu in Japan.

It all started very well, we left ontime from MSP at 9:45am and business class is a very spoiling experience. Domestically the seats were not all that different, they were wider and had little table space in between. The real difference was the service level, they immediately had drinks and then a lunch and then a snack and this was all between MSP and Washington. The food was very good, I suppose when you only have to prep for 12 there is far less room for error. Transfer to the second flight was also easy, the Washington airport was done in a charming ode to early 80’s in green and purple but easy to navigate. The business class for international is great. We each had our own pod chair that was fully adjustable and didn’t actually go flat to sleep but you could really stretch out. The food was good again but they served dinner at 4pm, they were trying to get us all to go to sleep. The dessert was terrible, I know, I’m being very picky here, but it was a peach tart and it was absolutely frozen solid. The stewardess swore that is the way it was supposed to be served but I think someone forgot to put the microwave step in her instructions. I watched two movies, Stranger then Fiction and X-Men 3, both were good and I think Stranger the Fiction was very well done, it had a bunch of levels and a story within a story. I slept about 4 hours and missed the breakfast but we landed an hour early. I think the best part about business class is the lounge. It is a nice private area with internet, outlets that fit my laptop plug, and nice snacks and drinks. I had a cappuccino and talked to Lars for a while and then we left to go to our flight.

Things were still going well, we got seated first and dinner orders were taken... I sat next to a very nice guy who worked for Nike and we talked sneakers for a while. After about 10 min we noticed that we did not seem to be taking off and then we got the news that the flight was canceled due to weather. They shuffled us all off and nobody really had any information. According to our bodies it was 3am and the three of us were not really functioning clearly. We got sent to a shady Japanese hotel the had cement hard beds and there was no internet in the rooms. We didn’t have a p hone that worked in Japan and the Northwest desk was closed so we were freaking out a little and in a group of about 20 other Americans similarly freaking out. Finally we got our Company after hours travel company who got us reserved on a flight to china the next day. We paid almost 1200 dollars for tickets and we are skipping the Korea section but we actually got a good plan going today. We are all back in the lounge drinking coffee and waiting for the next flight. Next stop China, hopefully this was the only snafu...