The departure began the day before as we left Yatsushiro by Relay Tsubame for Hakata. It was raining and the train was an hour late pulling in. We sat in Kumamoto Station for 30 minutes of it. It really didn't matter because we had no plans. It was raining hard in Fukuoka, so we took a dash to a Starbucks, sat in the blowing mist as far out of the rain as we could, and talked to a Philippino musician who had lost his band. When the rain let up a bit, we got a "dai" sized taxi, barely getting everything in, and rode to the Toyoko-Inn Eki Minamiguchi. A short ride but preferable to hauling luggage down the street in the rain. Since it was too early to check in, we checked our luggage, I paid anyway, and we headed out again for the station. We stopped in Yodobashi Camera where Drew got a gross of keitai straps for souvenirs, and we basically dried off a bit. At the station we got the subway for Ohori-Koen and walked over to Mike's apartment where we had wine and okonomiyaki for lunch, and heard about his new bar and his house burning down. We headed back to the subway through a small arcade, and rode it back to the station, where we just walked to the hotel and got our luggage to the rooms. Sartha didn't want to head out again (habitat too wet?), so Drew and I headed for Tenjin to see if we could find Mike's new bar. After checking directions at a C-Store, we found a half rain-erased chalk board at the foot of some steps by the ABC florist, heard loud music, and headed up. 5 draft beers, none Japanese, and a better stereo than the old bar. It started pouring down and we had to shut the windows and turn on the AC. 1 Japanese lady came in and Drew had an unofficial drinking race with her. She left and 2 girls came in and the salsa DVDs were played. A groupd from Korea that included 2 Irishmen came in so the Irish Rovers or some such DVD went on. By this time it was getting late since we had to leave the hotel by 6 AM so we took a taxi back.

The nasty little alarm went off at about 5 AM and got up and finished packing for the return. We all made it down to the lobby where we were the only ones to use the 6 AM shuttle to the airport. Check-in wasn't too bad this time, perhaps because there wasn't a long line of foreigners trying to figure it out. They did tag my bag wrong but caught it before I left the area and re-tagged it. I don't know what they did but I'm glad they discovered it. They probably had it only go to NRT instead of DFW. The flight to Tokyo was cloudy so couldn't see anything if I had looked. At Narita, we got in the wrong line for re-checkin before I figured it out and we got in the AA line for DFW. Afterwards we had lunch at a terrible little place on the second floor, before going through security and finding our gate to wait. Sarah changed the last of her yen to $ at a bank, and then we boarded.

Most of the flight was over cloud cover. We were over San Francisco at night and then over Nevada the land began to lighten with the dawn. By Capitol Reef NP, we could look down on some great desert scenery and I tried some pictures through the window.
Even in first class the flight was too long, but having now flown in first, cattle car is going to be intolerable.
In Dallas, Sarah headed for Nashville, Drew for Lexington, and I headed for Madison.