Visiting Japan During a Typhoon - why not?

I've spent a lot of time on the water in the past 6 months, and fair amount of time avoiding storms. You may have read about some of those activities on Yachting Cazalea, another of my blogs. But this trip tops our cruise to Seattle. On this trip we have run into two hurricanes, or as they are called in the Pacific Ocean "TYPHOONS". Windy and Rainy are their characteristics.

The trip started calmly enough. A United Air flight from San Diego to LA; another flight to Tokyo. Seats were okay thanks to the upgrade for $$ scheme; food was pretty awful and booze basically non-existent (although the flight attendant slipped us a couple small bottles of Cava).

Notice the woman behind Laurie? I saw her in the airport before we left LAX, and she sat behind me on the flight (never kicked the seat once), but when we got to Tokyo we were astonished to find her (and ourselves by accident) the object of paparazzi - TV crews chased her all the way through to immigration and were set up outside the baggage claim. I asked her if she was famous and she said "No, and I never expected this to happen!" A mystery... anyone recognize her, below on the left?

Excitement soon turned to tedium as we waited 2-3 hours for the rest of our group to arrive, and then took the shuttle to our hotel. The room is pretty nice - good size and well equipped with amenities.

We got some sleep, had breakfast and jumped onto the tour bus for our first look at Japan.

Check the next blog post for details ...