Today was the first day of my vacation, which was spent traveling.

My initial itinerary had us (Leon and I) traveling on ANA airlines round trip from JFK to Narita Airport in Japan. However, due to issues with upgrades from economy to business, I changed it at the last minute to:

JetBlue from JFK to Dulles International Airport in Washington DC
ANA from Dulles to Narita in Japan.

Coming back will be:

ANA from Narita to Los Angeles International in California
JetBlue from LAX to JFK

The JetBlue flight wasn’t too bad. Smaller jet used for the short flight (little over an hour). Luggage wasn’t too big of a deal.

Then we had a much longer flight on ANA airlines (about 12 hours). Check in was easy. Tagged the luggage with “Star Alliance Priority,” dropped it, and was on our way. Also got entry to the “lounge” for before the flight. Complimentry fruit, ramen noodles, WiFi internet, private bathrooms, and plenty of tables with power to use. Flight was delayed for 50 minutes. Still made it to Narita on time though, amazingly. Crazily, the first class and business class people get on the plane with their own entrance. The “commoners” get on in the back of the plane, lol. (Just kidding, I think it’s good to have parallelism to allow more people to board at once, but some people on forums complained certain airports only had 1 gate. Seriously, get over yourself.) It was not the newest planes, as we had the old-style business-class seats. Still very comfortable, except in the “bed” position, as they’re too short. Food was very good. Service was excellent. IFE was OK. There was a program called Delicious Nippon, which was about Japanese food. There was a woman in it which was a terrible actress, her surprises were really forced…it just made it funny.

After that, we took the Narita Express to our station, Shinagawa. Our hotel was a short walk from the station, we didn’t have too much trouble finding it, thankfully. We ate in the Cafe24 on the lobby floor, which wasn’t too bad, but nothing exciting.

I took a Leica M8.2 with me on the trip, to get an idea of what the “Leica experience” was that everyone talked about. I took a 28mm f/2.8 and a 50mm f/2 lens with me. I will be adding info at the bottom of each post detailing my experiences with it.


The Leica: Took shots at Dulles airport, camera held up fine. Have been using the 28mm most of the time. In the plane, there were some shots which didnt come out as expected due to the parallax error in the viewfinder. Focusing can be a hassle some times.