After a long trip, we finally arrived in Tokyo on Sunday afternoon. Like many air travel journeys, ours was filled with unexpected twists and turns. First, our Calgary to San Francisco flight was cancelled at the last minute, so we had to find a way to get to San Francisco before our Tokyo flight on Saturday morning. Thanks to the generosity of the sister of one of my traveling companions, we had a place to sleep (for a few hours) in Vancouver and we were able to successfully make it to San Francisco.
As we boarded our brand new Boeing 787 to Tokyo, Anna and I came to the frightening realization that we had left the exchange orders for our Japan Rail passes in our safe at home. The Japan Rail pass is only available to foreigners and must be purchased in another country before you depart for Japan. A few frantic moments and $6US for an hour of wifi on our flight later, we found out that Japan Rail began a trial period for selling the rail passes inside Japan for the first time ever on March 8th, and that we could return our unused vouchers to the place we got them for almost a full refund. The trial period runs March 8, 2017 to March 31, 2018. What a relief!
After arriving in Tokyo, we had a few housekeeping items to take care of. We picked up our pocket wifi, got our rail passes, and found our way to the station to make our way to Hiroshima. We boarded our first Shinkansen (high speed train) and embarked on the 4 1/2 hour, 900 km journey to Hiroshima. By the time we arrived in Hiroshima, we had been traveling by plane, train, or automobile for 36 hours.
Despite the long trip, we're all excited to get the sightseeing started tomorrow morning and are very much looking forward to a much-needed rest in an actual bed in Hiroshima!