No sushi. And No Ninjas!

After three airplane flights and more than 24 hours of traveling, we finally made it to Beijing last night Thursday). We landed at 9:20 pm local time and finally settled down into our hotel room at about midnight. It was a long day, but luckily pretty uneventful. No delays and Thatcher was as good as you could ask a five-year-old to be on such a long day. We gave him a present--a Nintendo DS for the trip and he was very happy.

It is a small world. During my life I have had some really crazy coincidences. Or maybe something else. Although we are going through different agencies, another couple from our area were also on all three of our flights. We were recently introduced to Marty and Tiffany Kent by Ben and Wendy Lee and had dinner with them a couple of months ago. Kristi and Tiffany started communicating via face book and as it turns out, they will be in Guangzhou the same time we will be. It was good to get a chance to visit with them and spend our layovers in both Dallas and Tokyo with them. It was really encouraging to talk to another couple going through the same situation.

Speaking of Tokyo…for the most part, the airport was what I expected. It was very modern, clean and commercial. There were duty-free stores for everything you can imagine. However, the most important thing that I was after was in short supply---namely food. There was no food court, and only a very few restaurants. Thatcher and I had Cajun French Fries (I swear they had Tony Cacherie’s on them) and Chinese vegetable noodle soup. There was some sushi, but it looked pretty tame…like a California roll or similiar. I was really looking forward to sushi in Japan. My two favorite Japanese things are sushi and ninjas. I did not really think I would see ninjas, but I was sure I would be able to try good sushi there, but no luck on either.

At the end of the day, “Uncle Zhou” (pronounced Joe) was waiting for us at the airport. He got us checked into our hotel, instructed us on tipping (not much, if any) and told us to try and get some sleep, as we were going to have a big day the next day. We are staying at the Holiday Inn Downtown Beijing and the rooms are very small, but the hotel overall is very nice. We got to our rooms and we all were asleep as soon as our heads touched the pillows. We have a big day on Friday.