Day 0 (Sunday): Departing for Tokyo

A freezing rain storm was scheduled to arrive in Toronto later in the morning so I was a little worried about departing on time (8:30AM) since I had a connecting flight to catch in Vancouver to Tokyo. Just as everyone was boarded and seated, I spotted rain drops on the window of the plane. Oh crap I thought, hoping we would be able to get out of here just before it started. Another plane was blocking us from exiting our gate also, the bugger. The rain wasn't coming down hard but we had to get the plane de-iced before takeoff which eventually delayed the departure of the flight by about an hour.

The plane was thankfully one of the newer Air Canada crafts complete with individual LCD screens mounted on the back of chairs. I used Seatguru to narrow down my selection of plane seats beforehand and I chose an aisle seat on the side section of the cabin. There was a fair selection of TV programs and movies available. I ended up watching 3:10 to Yuma (3.5/5) and the first half of the 11th Hour (doc on the environment). Sitting in front of me was a lady who was cracking up all by herself during the flight with whatever it was she was watching...I think it was episodes of The Office. I amused myself by watching the guy in the middle section of the same row watching the girl watching her LCD. He was enamoured by her and would go out of his way across 2 people to show her how to use the LCD screens even when she didn't ask. I ended up sitting beside this nice lady who was travelling to visit her sister just north of Vancouver. Her sister was getting treatment for an illness and she visited her several times during the year. I didn't ask what her sister had but feared it was the dreaded "C" word. There was no free food on the plane but they sold Subway sandwiches. I bought one and it turned out to be mediocre just as I expected.

Despite being delayed, we caught up in the air and arrived in Vancouver on time. When I arrived in YVR, it felt like I had already arrived in an Asian city because there were Asians all over the place. Of all varieties too since I could distinctly hear Japanese, Chinese and Korean being spoken. I guess that's to be expected being the hub to all places in Asia. Since I didn't want to count on airplane food the rest of the way to Tokyo, I bought some Wendy's even though I wasn't really hungry. There was this older Japanese couple ahead of me in line who wanted to order the breakfast but alas, breakfast services ended at 10:30AM. They had free Wi-Fi in the YVR Terminal which was nice and helped me kill a few minutes on my cellphone while waiting to board.

The plane from Vancouver to Tokyo from the inside looked as if it was decades old and it probably was too. I could not believe they still had planes in service where everyone had to share one large screen for the in-flight movie. The last time I flew was many, many, years ago and it looked like they took this plane directly out of storage just so that I could feel some nostalgia. Although the seat was comfy at first, I was dying by mid-flight. My rear, back and neck were all on pain and I was constantly shifting pointlessly trying to get comfy. In addition, the guy in front of me decided to decline his seat all the way back to its fullest. On top of that, he had a wall in front of him so he had his feet up which pushed his seat back probably another inch further into my space. I think there's an unwritten rule that one should never fully decline their seat back out of common courtesy to the one behind you. The in-flight movies were The Game Plan starring the Rock which I enjoyed, Stardust (WTF?!), and You've Got Mail which I only saw half of but enjoyed still. They started playing some odd Dustin Hoffman/Natalie Portman movie that just looked weird so I skipped watching it. For the 2nd flight in a row, the person in front of me was laughing hysterically all by himself at various moments during the flight. He had one of those video iPod's and was watching Family Guy and other shows he brought with him. The food was mediocre which was to be expected. I sat beside this guy from Alberta who was travelling to Tokyo with his boss on business. He makes the trip out there several times a year. I quizzed him about all things Japanese such as whether the subways were really that rammed. He said that everything I had heard about Tokyo is probably true. He worked on his laptop preparing a powerpoint presentation for work the entire flight.