Traveling with a cold is a real pain. I’m constantly sneezing, coughing, and hacking. So, I’ve gone to the Japanese style — a face mask. It actually is helping to filter out some crap in the air and I don’t sneeze nearly as often. Hurrah.

The flight from Portland to Narita (the airport serving Tokyo, Japan) was mostly uneventful. The airplane was about a year old, but several of the seats in Business Class didn’t work correctly, including mine. The footrest didn’t work correctly on my seat. The woman in front of me could put her seat down, but it wouldn’t go back up. It took several folks to get the seat mostly back up for landing. The flight was full — both in Business Class and in Economy. I’m now in the Northwest lounge in the airport waiting for my connecting flight to Manila. It’s about 5:20 p.m. Tokyo time (2:20 a.m. Pocatello time) and my flight is scheduled to leave in two hours. I took a short nap on the way over, but I’m pretty tired right now. It’s time to be in bed and I’ve got several hours to go before that will happen. Even then it’ll be a short night’s sleep!

The weather here in Japan is very nice. Partly cloudy with temperatures in the mid 60’s. The lounge is pretty crowded with people making connecting international flights. These flights start in about a half hour and the lounge will start emptying out and by 8 p.m. it’ll be empty. The big difference from the last time I was here is that the wifi is now free in the lounge. That is a nice improvement! It used to cost about $5 for a couple of hours of connectivity. The landing today was to the south, so we came in over Tsuchiura and Mt. Tsukuba was visible in the haze in the distance. Lots of good memories associated with this airport and Japan. The airport terminals have changed enormously from when we left in 1998, all for the better. Both terminals now appear to be open, so that eternal project may be coming to an end. In a couple of years my business trips will come to an end as I retire. That’s one part of retirement that I’m not looking forward to!

I’ve arrived in Portland from Salt Lake City. My opportunity to move to a different seat did not marterilize. We waited, waited some more, and the front door didn’t close at the time it should have closed. Then a whole group of people came on, huffing and puffing. I guess their flight from out east was delayed and we were waiting for them. Every seat filled up except one middle seat near the front. I wasn’t about to move for that option!

I’ve caught something — it kind of acts like hay fever and kind of acts like a cold. On the flight from Pocatello to Salt Lake, everything cleard up and I kind of exulted, “This is hay fever!” However, that was not the case from Salt Lake to Portland. So maybe it is a cold. I’ve got plenty of meds with me, most of which don’t do anything other than mask the symptoms. If it’s a cold, it isn’t a bad one (yet). If it’s hay fever, it’s pretty bad. We’ll see what the next ten-hour flight brings!

This is my travel schedule: