The first 4...

Jan 2 we arrived at SeaTac airport at about 9:30am PST and began the process of getting checked in for our flight which was set to depart at around 1pm. It was a good thing that we got there that early too, since Scarlet threw up on the way there and as there was much paperwork involved in shipping a dog and checking in 8 pieces of luggage, as well as having 6 carry-ons and a car seat run through the security checkpoint. By the way, any of you traveling with children, it is now permissible to bring formula, and baby medications with you in your carry-on in amounts larger than 3oz (worked for juice in a sippy cup as well). They will take it from you and go test it somehow to make sure it's really what you say it is, but then you are on your way...

After somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 hours of air travel, we gratefully touched down at Narita International Airport at just after 4pm (11pm PST*). With some hurry and scurry, we found our way to the immigration counter and braced ourselves for what was next to come, having heard that customs could take quite some time to get through. To our amazement, we quickly made it through immigration and then through customs for our pet and for our luggage in less than 1/2 hour. I guess we didn't look like the kind of people who would be trying to sneak stuff into the country...

As we popped out of the inner recesses of the airport, with carts laden with luggage, we began looking for our sponsor**. All around were people with signs written in Japanese waiting for their passengers, and even a few Americans waiting for other Americans, however, our sponsor was nowhere to be seen... We pulled up a corner of the waiting area, and I took our little doggy out of his crate into the great out of doors for a bit of respite from being locked in his little crate for the last 13 hours.

After 3 hours waiting and wandering through the airport looking for someone who looked like they were looking for us (we didn't even know what our sponsor looked like), we were certain that we would have to come up with a new solution to the question of how to get to the Navy base from the airport. We stepped outside with our 2 carts of luggage and asked the very nice concierge what the cost would be to catch a cab to the base. He came back just a few seconds later with the reply that it was going to be around ¥40,000 ($435.61 USD) and the mention that due to our large # of bags, we would need to hire 2 taxis to get everything to our destination... HH!! With that revelation, we resumed seeking out our other options.

While we had wandered through the airport, we had seen a sign for the "DoD Liason" over an empty dark little office. A sign on the desk stated that shuttles from the airport to the base (no pets allowed) would run 3 times a day and that the desk would be staffed for 30 minutes prior to the departure time. Wow, what a user friendly system that is!!! Anyway, as we made our way back into the airport to figure out what to do, it happened to be with that 30 minute window and the man at the desk made some phone calls around and managed to through the grapevine get ahold of our sponsor who said he was less than 1/2 hour away. When he finally arrived over 4 hours after our plane landed, our sponsor said that he'd been there earlier in the day and waited for us (thought we were going to be in at 2 and had left at 3:30), had headed home and realized that he was supposed to be there at 4ish, so had turned around again and was nearly back when he got the call. So finally at 7:20pm (3:20am PST) we were in the van and headed on a nearly 2 hour drive to the base...


*I mention PST because that's our originating time zone.
**Sponsor in this instance is used to reference military personnel from the same dept and branch of service who volunteer to pick up arriving military families and serve as a point of contact/information/etc while the family gets settled into the new command and housing.