Here is the short story of my trip over to Japan for the beginning of my tour....
What a long freakin' trip! First, a 12 hour flight, direct to Narita (Tokyo) on a Korean Air aircraft that was very old. The inside was the old, 2 X 5 X 2 seat format with one big screen in the middle of the cabin. So everyone watched the same screen.......same screen.......12 hours.....ONE movie, the rest was Korean programming (which we could watch, hearing translated in English, yeah!). The movie was 'The Break Up' with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Anniston. Two or three funny Vince moments; other than that: DOG MEAT. So I spent my time reading, listening to music and trying not to be sick from the Korean Air version of Bi Bim Bop.
Landed in Tokyo at 3:00pm, met Dustin (the other comic on the tour) - who seems to be a great guy, by the way (his first tour). Then we hopped a bus (they called it Limo) to Heneda Airport. The bus ride was a little over an hour. From here we waited at the Heneda Airport for about 2 hours before catching our flight to Hiroshima. We finally board, and take out 1 and 1/2 hour flight to Hiroshima.....this flight, interestingly enough, had about 19 babies on it apparently training for the "Scream Olympics". All I ask for is a Diet Coke. Did I ask for a warm Diet Coke? No. But guess what Dan got? I wanted so bad to splash the warm Diet Coke into the faces of the screaming babies.....better yet, into the faces of the parents of the screaming babies.
Once in Hiroshima, we went though baggage and met our military escort that would be driving us to base. He was right on time which was nice. What wasn't nice is that the ride to base was another hour and a half. I'm not sure if the driver knew we were exhausted, or of he just got a bonus for going over 95 MPH, but he was cruising nonetheless. Also, I think his understanding of English was of the selected hearing-type. He seemed to understand everything we said EXCEPT, "Can we stop to go to the bathroom?".
But it all came to a happy ending when we got to our barracks, where Dustin and I each got our own officers suite where we officially checked in at 10:45pm. I believe that puts my total travel time at about 29 total hours. I went to sleep immediately and got a good 8 hours of sleep. So now I am at the Library at Camp Iwakuni (a Marine Air Base) for about 48 hours. We have our first show tonight, and a day off tomorrow! I will be exploring and introducing Dustin to the infamous 100 Yen store (Like a high end 99cent store).
That's all for now. That's some Sake for that ass.
Take care everyone!
Dan