I booked my flights months in advance and of course with schedule changes things got all messed up. I ended up flying American on Saturday April 11th, 2015:
- Augusta 5:59 am to Charlotte 6:48 am (49 minutes)
- Charlotte 7:29 am to Dallas 9:12 am (2 hours 43 minutes - 1 hour time change)
- Dallas 11:08 am to Tokyo Narita 2:20 pm the following day (13 hours 12 minutes - 13 hours ahead of US east coast time).
Augusta airport was amazingly busy but it was Masters Saturday and so a bunch of extra flights had been laid on. I ended up sitting next to a lady who had never flown before. She was rather nervous and that took my mind off my own anxiety about making my connections etc. We got to Charlotte a little early and it turned out that she was also flying to Dallas on my flight and was seated next to me again. The Dallas flight was also a little early and I had some time to wander around the airport a little. I did a good deal of walking to try and prepare myself for 13 hours of inactivity. I had paid extra for a seat with extra leg room and was given the first row of economy, a bulkhead seat on the right side, an aisle seat in a group of 2. That was about as good as it was going to get for me in economy. My feet were able to reach the bulkhead wall so I could put them up. The lady next to me was an event planner going to a conference she was organizing. She had been an accountant previously. We talked for a good amount of time and ate lunch and I watched a movie (The Imitation Game about Turing) and some TV shows. It seemed like time was passing well until I realized that we had only been flying for 5 hours and still had more than half to go. We got some dinner and then I tried to have a little nap and slept fitfully for a couple of hours. I watched more videos and wandered about a bit. Then they fed us a snack and we got ready to land.
We were 20 minutes early and getting through immigration and customs was a breeze, taking only 40 minutes from the time we got off the plane. Narita airport is 50 miles from Shinjuku by road. I had researched all sorts of options for getting to my hotel, Limo Bus, Narita Express train and Skyliner train. All had good and bad points. The Limo Bus was the easiest but the timetable said it would take over 2 hours and that seemed like a long time to be stuck in a seat again. Narita Express was quicker but I would get off at Shinjuku main station which is very large and very busy. I would then have to navigate my way out of the right station exit and get to the hotel on foot (about 10 minutes walk but with a fair number of steps perhaps which would be awkward with my bags), or take a taxi. Skyliner was quicker and cheaper than the Narita Express but required changing trains and also ended up at Shinjuku main station.
In the end when I got out of the Arrivals Hall I realised the next Limo Bus would leave in 7 minutes and would be going to the Hilton which was the closest point to my hotel of any of the transport options. So I bought a ticket which was combined with a 1 day subway and metro pass at a good discount, 3400 Yen for both, and at 2:45 pm the bus left for Tokyo. It stopped at Terminal 1 then Shinjuku station and then the Hilton. It was scheduled to arrive at the Hilton at 4:55 pm but we actually got there at 4:15 pm, 40 minutes early. Presumably this was because Sunday traffic is much lighter than weekdays. It was not a bad trip, there were some things to see out of the window and being my first time in Japan, everything was new to me.
It was a short walk from the Hilton to my hotel for the first night, Nishitetsu Inn.