Travel meets Technology

What does a guy who lives and breathes technology and a woman who is infected with the travel bug have in common (besides being related)? A trip to Japan! It seemed the most logical course of action to cash in some RRSP dollars in order to travel with dear son to the land of gadgets, anime and tea. And of course I was looking forward to some bonding time with a young man who works hard and needs to play more.

The trip from Vancouver over the Pacific is long. We made it longer by flying to Calgary first (no available direct flights from Vancouver--go figure!) before heading east and made an easy connection to the flight to Tokyo. The problems began an hour out of Tokyo. Because typhoon Wipha had just made its way along the east coast of Japan, the airport was experiencing a bit of chaos and backlog of arrivals and departures. Our plane was directed to maintain a "holding pattern" over the Pacific until further notice.

Once we were finally able to land, we were then left waiting on the runway for an hour until a gate was free. Next delay was the immigration line, which took an hour to pass through. Later when we went to book our "rapid" train to the city, we were told it was cancelled and we'd have to use the "local" train system. We weren't exactly sure whether the train we hopped onto was going where we wanted, and we had to change to another when we got to the "end of the line" but miraculously we arrived at the correct station, caught a taxi to our hotel and collapsed, 24 hours from when our journey began.

Welcome to Japan, the land of extremes!