Here we go again! 1:45am and the alarm goes off! We quickly do some last minute things…coffee, packing and off to the airport, one hour away. We arrived at the park and fly around 3:30am, parked and RUSHED to get on a shuttle bus, as it was -11 degree celsius. We weren’t really prepared for the cold as we were going to the Philippines with an average temperature of 30-40 celsius. 

We arrived at the airport pretty much on schedule, at 3:45am and we were able to check in at a booth successfully, we just had to show an agent our Philippines visa information. Thankfully we did not have to wait in a long line as we had the smallest bag we had ever travelled with. Security was no big deal, but we did have to remove our shoes for the first time in a long time (is it just me or are the rules for security different at every airport?!). We then had to go through US customs, which I didn’t realise would take place in Canada. The US customs guy was miserable….but I would have been shocked if he wasn’t. We then walked to our boarding area… domestic flights out of terminal three are basic. There were only a few gates and nothing open at 4-5am, so we couldn’t even get a coffee. We read our Robert Louis Stevenson books at the gate and waited for boarding. Our flight was pretty empty (possible because this was the first week of Trump tariffs and Canadians were boycotting America hard [which they still do]), so it boarded quickly, like the quickest I have ever seen…10 minutes tops! We pushed back from the gate early and headed to be de-iced, as it was -11. De-icing is so weird, it’s like a carwash for planes. We took off on time to a gorgeous pink/magenta sunrise over Toronto. 

The flight was only 1.5 hours. We were given tomato juice and some cookies. We landed at terminal three in Chicago which thankfully happened to be our terminal for our flight to Tokyo (but this took some figuring out). We had about two hours to wait until our flight to Tokyo boarded. We went to a Mexican restaurant and ordered two delicious eggplant sandwiches with pickled stuff, breaded eggplant, jalapeno sauce and many delicious toppings. We also got two IPAs. It wasn’t cheap, but it was worth it. It came to $54 USD for our meal. We people watched and ate our delicious meal before heading to our gate.

The flight boarded right on time and we had two seats together at the back of the plane. The flight wasn’t completely full. JAL (the Japanese airline) is incredible! We sat down and almost immediately the flight attendant came over to ask about our vegetarian meals and introduced herself. We were seated behind an eccentric  pair of Filipino women who I think pushed the flight attendants quite far… but the flight attendant remained 100% over the top nice. We were served three meals on the flight; ravioli first, then a weird pepper sandwich and finally a gnocchi dish. The food was ok, definitely not as good as the ANA (another Japanese airline) flight we had been on where we were given vegan Japanese curry! I watched a trifecta of old films; Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which I had never seen, Top Gun, which I had forgotten and Speed, which was my favourite as a kid! 

The flight was long…like actually fourteen hours, where flights from Toronto to Tokyo will often say they are fourteen hours and end up being thirteen or twelve, that wasn’t the case. We did land right on time and we did see a lovely large mount Fuji from the plane, almost cloudless and covered in snow. Upon landing we were taken by bus to the arrival area. The arrival couldn’t have gone any smoother, so different from our arrival in Haneda in October where immigration took hours. We walked right up to a border agent and I was through to baggage claim in under one minute. We didn’t have baggage to claim, only tiny bags, so we walked right to customs and handed in our form and walked into the arrival area. 

It was a few minutes walk to the Tokyo Monorail line, where we topped up our Suica cards and hopped on the monorail right away, an express train that went right to our stop, the last stop, Hamamtsucho. The train took thirteen minutes!! We had landed at 4pm and made it all the way downtown to our hotel in thirty minutes! We walked for five minutes from the monorail station to our accommodation “Super Hotel Hamamtsucho” with a glimpse of Tokyo Tower. Check in was easy. We paid and were given our room code, and headed up to the room. The room was more spacious than I had imagined, not saying much for Tokyo, but it was nice and we even had a view of Tokyo Tower from the room. We got settled in real quick and then set right back out on a little walking journey to Don Quijote twenty minutes away to get Jives a belt (his had broken on the plane). 

It was nice to be out and about in the fresh air walking. It was about 10 celsius. We walked along a main road, spotting some lovely shrines and a Yamanote train (my favourite). After finding a belt at Don Quijote, we walked ten more minutes through Ginza to Tokyu Hands to get Jives his favourite drawing pens. He found his favourite, and bought three, as well as a few more to try out. I got some washi tape and a few stickers for my notebook. We then took the Yamanote line back to Hamamtsucho station, stopping at a Family Mart to get some onigiri and drinks for dinner in the hotel room. We grabbed some pillows and pajamas on the way up to the room from the little amenities area ( regular pillows in Japan are like sacks of gravel so it was nice to get to choose a soft pillow). We then had a quick snack in bed while watching some Japanese television before getting three or so hours of sleep. 

Our alarms went off at 10:45pm. Urgh. The last Tokyo Monorail to the airport was at 11:00pm so we had to make sure we were on it. We packed up and headed out of the room by 10:38pm. It was our “morning” but I think a lot of people were just leaving work or going to nighttime functions. We walked the five minutes to the station and took the 10:49pm train to Haneda. I am glad we were cautious as it seems we may have been on the last train and the train did not run until 11:30pm like the internet had told me. It was a local train this time, so there were more stops, but we had time to kill. We arrived at terminal three by 11:30pm and easily went through security and customs. We arrived on the other side of security with well over two hours to spare. 

We found a 711 and got some breakfast foods to eat as we waited. We also found a place selling Shoenen Jump manga weekly magazines for Jives. Our flight boarded a bit late, and took off a bit late as well, but we had nowhere to be once we landed in Manila, and lots of time to spare. 

We were seated once again together in two seats at the back of the plane. The flight staff was awesome, coming over to introduce themselves again and confirm our vegetarian meals. My TV screen didn’t work which was annoying, but I am sure they would have come over to fix it if I asked, but it was a short flight so I didn’t bother. Our meal was lasagna and I had an Asahi beer with it. Jives watched Top Gun Maverick and when he was done we switched seats so I could watch it after him as well. We landed in Manila at 5am and walked to immigration and customs. There was a line…somewhere, but mostly there was chaos and shoving and at least eighty people in wheelchairs seated in the middle of it all. An official was yelling out instructions to make sure everyone had the evisa arrival app and barcode. We slowly shuffled to the beginning of the line . We only had the evisa government issued ID, so I completed the evisa in line (it wouldn’t work at home for some reason). After about 30 minutes of shuffling and shoving we made it to the immigration official and he didn’t even ask to see out evisa at all. We then walked through the crazy baggage claim area and waited in line again to go through customs. My first impression of the Philippines is that people love to line up crazily and move very slow. We sloooooowly made our way out of the immigration/ customs area and into the arrival hall, having our evisa scanned along the way haphazardly.