Our Japanese Adventure: Dec. 30, 2011 - We say "hello" to Tokyo

We landed at Narita Airport at 3:30 pm on Dec. 30, about 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Since that was about 12:30 am Houston time, Greer and Cooper were out and were not interested in waking up. We had to haul them out of their seats and get them moving off the plane. They were not happy to be awake, and they were even less happy when we told them they had to stay awake until 8 pm to try to help them get adjusted to their new time zone. Maybe next time they'll listen to our suggestion of a nap? No, probably not.

Immigrations and Customs went smoothly, and then it was time to try to load our as much of our luggage as possible into the taxi van. We fit in 6 bags and arranged for delivery of the rest for the following day. While Drew and Jen were arranging the delivery and converting some money to yen, the kids waited in the van with the taxi driver. Cooper was already asleep before we made it back to the van, and Greer quickly followed once the van was moving. It was about an hour's drive from the airport to the Conrad Hotel, so the kids had a good nap.

When checking in, we discovered they had made a mistake with our reservation. Instead of two beds, our room had only one bed. New Year's is a big holiday in Japan, and the hotel was fully booked. However, they felt terrible about their mistake, and they put us in the Royal Hamarikuyu Suite for the night. Lucky mistake for us! The daily rate for the suite is normally $7000! The kids took video and lots of pictures as we told them not to get used to it.

Greer picked a small selection of her pictures to post on the blog and included a few from the hotel website to avoid showing our mess (since the kids didn't take the pictures until the following morning).