Skip to main content

Off and Running

We're sitting in a hotel restaurant at 11:30 p.m. waiting for fish and chips and a Heineken. It's our last ounce of energy before we crash completely out. 


It's been 25 hours since we left our house and I snapped this picture before getting in the cab to the subway station...


Our flight out of Sendai was in the late afternoon so we had all morning to pack and prepare, but somehow we just barely made it out of the house in time.


I'm trying to beat the boys at their own game by outdoing their crazy faces when we take photos, but I'm losing apparently.


Kenzo and Osamu were excited to pack their own backpacks for the trip. Kenzo packed exactly what I thought he would: his monkey, a Pokemon monster ball, a robot pterodactyl, and his pencil case.


Osamu packed light and pragmatically; just his magic wand, made from a piece of rolled up paper.


Makes sense. If you forget your toothbrush just wave that wand and conjure one up.

When we checked in we bumped into our neighbor's sister. She works at the airport. I told Eri I didn't know she worked here and she said how could you not know everyone knows.


I didn't know.


We had a little time after all so we headed up to the roof where they have an observation deck that the boys and I have visited before. This time Kenzo lucked out with the telescope because mama put money in it for him. Papa never does.




After watching a bunch of planes take off and land it was our turn to head for the international gate.


I pre-ordered our meals online when I checked in. What a world we live in. I got kids meals for the boys and they were good... for me. I ate pretty much all of them, plus my dinner. The boys ate their fruit and bread. Maybe it was the excitement or the totally different tastes or the nervousness of being on a long flight, but they rejected the chicken and noodles. I can't let food go to waste so I did what I do, which is stuff it all down and feel terrible later.


They're like petting zoo animals.


By the time we landed in Taipei I was full and lethargic.


Kenzo and Osamu immediately found a playground and they were off and running, literally. Eri went to a nearby gate that didn't have any flights leaving for a while and staked out a quiet spot. I started talking to a nice couple from England who have a daughter around the boys' age and they were playing together. They were on a layover from London to Brisbane to visit family. 

The boys were incredibly hyperactive. It was 10 p.m. in Taiwan, which means it was 11 p.m. where we just left. Eri called me so I said excuse me to the nice couple from England. I said hi and Eri just said, "I can hear the boys all way down the airport corridor."


In-flight entertainment has come a long way, so the boys were mostly occupied in between sleeping and eating. It made the 12-hour flight a little easier. Kenzo watched Spider Man over and over. Osamu found the Paw Patrol movie. I was sitting across the aisle and ordered myself a whiskey on the rocks and promptly fell asleep after the high school kid next to me finished talking my ear off.


We made it. Let the American-style shenanigans begin.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not About Baseball

I stayed up past my bedtime again last night. I almost made it. I watched a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso and came to a good stopping point where I was satisfied with myself for enjoying some quiet TV time with my favorite show and even though it was after midnight, I was confident I could still get a pretty good night's sleep.  But no. For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to just lay on the living room carpet and put on a movie. I saw the first seven or eight minutes of Goodfellas and then I woke up when the end credits were rolling with Sid Vicious' is cover of My Way . I brush my teeth and I can see the light of day already shining in through the bathroom window. "It’s almost the longest day of the year," I told myself, to at least rationalize why I'm brushing my teeth and crawling into bed at this hour. I was trying to minimize the mental anguish I regularly put on myself for not just going to bed like I should. I told Eri that I was thinking a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Overpriced Highball for the Big Guy

I keep falling asleep at my desk and waking up all groggy and surly in the middle of night, stumbling downstairs to brush my teeth without waking anyone, and slinking back up the steps and into bed. So I was the last one up again this morning, but I made up for it by quickly getting ready and taking the boys out on a Sunday morning walk to look for bugs. Kenzo has been particularly keen on capturing another lizard. He doesn't understand that lizard season is ending and those guys are becoming more and more rare. He got his hopes up when we came across a little one walking up some woodsy steps. After that we took a break. Eri's sister and her husband stopped by to grab the car seats that the boys just graduated from. Their little girl Emika is just now big enough to start using one and next spring she's gonna have a brand new baby brother or sister who will also need a car seat, so the timing worked out nice for all of us. Emika apparently loves Thomas the Tank Engine (who d...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mr. Blue Sky

Man, I conked out so hard on the living room floor tonight. Right after bath time, before story time. I barely remember. Completely exhausted. Big adventure day. Another in a long series I hope the boys will remember when they’re older... our first IMAX movie, a downtown city outing, and some life lessons in the game center. We left the house at 9:15 a.m. and didn’t get back until nearly 6 p.m., totally spent but full of pizza and memories. The Wild Robot in IMAX was totally stunning. The scale, the colors, the sound. We could feel every gust of wind and rustle of leaves. I made sure we had prime seats, row G, right in the center. Two big buckets of popcorn too, which, according to Kenzo and Osamu, I  absolutely should not  be sharing. “You should get your own!” they kept saying. I think a little bit of popcorn thievery is well within my rights as the papa. After the movie, we headed through the cold and wind across to the game center on the other side of Sendai Station. Being...
Post a Comment
Read more