EN-ROUTE TO NISEKO

So 17 hrs of flying later, one sprint to catch our connection, and no sleep at all... we've made it to Tokyo. The only thing we are missing is my backpack.. it got left in Beijing. They say it should be in Niseko within a few days. I'm not to worried about it. When we touched down in Beijing we had 45 min to disembark our plane clear international transfers then make it to our next gate on the other side of the airport. We were doing alright for time until we hit a roadblock. There was only ONE woman manning the international transfers booth with a line up of about 50 and she wasn't letting ANYONE through. We finally made it through at the same time pre-boarding was starting for our flight. We still thought we had some time until we ran down the stairs and realized we had to go through internal security. After running through that we caught one of those little taxis that you always see the old people on. Our taxi driver almost ran down a few little old ladies but he did get us to our gate just in time! 

All of us were absolutely dead tired for the trip to Tokyo. We had all been up for about 24 hrs with no sleep. I think we were all out before the plane even took off and only woke up for it to land. After an hour or so of dealing with my lost baggage our only challenge was to find some comfy beds for the night. I never thought airport benches could be so comfy. All in all this trip has been nothing but an adventure and lots of laughs so far. We are off to Sapporo and then to Niseko today. After a 2 hr flight and a 2 hr bus ride we will finally be at our new homes. It hasn't quite fully set in that we are gone for good yet, but I'm sure it will soon!