R@ndom Thoughts

12/20 - Day 1 of my skip trip
Michael and I were serious late this morning. Mostly because of the traffic jam of Monday, but we still should have taken an earlier bus. We were supposed to meet with other people at the airport at 7:30 AM, but when we got there, it's 8:30 AM already. We were one hour late and our plane was going to leave at 9:30 AM. So one thing leads to another, we hurried to pass the immigration check and both were not aware of the fact that ATMs are not available in the departure area. Although later we found out we could still withdraw money after landing in Japan (using Cirrus), I guess somehow previous events must have affected my mind and made it quite unstable, which was going to lead to yet another unexpected event.
We met for the first time our two other ski coaches (the first one waited for us in the check-in counter) and other people in this group, most of them are students of American School and their parents. Those students are much younger then I originally imagined. I have never taken a plane with so many children, so when I heard some of the them yelling when the plane got a little bumpy I thought I was riding a roller coaster. After three hours flight, the plane landed in a raining New Chitose Airport in Sapporo. Seen through the small window beside my seat, I noted that the place was covered with snow and the worry of not having enough snow for ski was immediately gone away.
I rented a phone (J-P02, a rather old model from Panasonic for J-Phone) for roaming at Far EasTone's counter in C.K.S Airport. It came with a black purse with a charger and a user manual in it, which I absentmindedly left on the plane when I got off. But very luckily, it came into my mind before I passed the immigration check and the purse was recovered with the help of an airport personnel within about 10 minutes. So, what can I say. The beginning is always the hardest part and since we had come through it, I was looking forward to the rest of the trip rather enthusiastically.