Our trip started in Sault Ste. Marie after saying teary good-bye's to friends and family. On Sunday September 2, 2001 we flew standby from Sault Ste. Marie to Toronto.

After staying with friends for Sunday night and Monday, Chris' parents drove us to Pearson International Airport and we departed from Toronto on Tuesday September 4th, 2001 (more tearful good-bye's!).

Our travel agent put us on two different flights to Vancouver (the ding-bat!) but Allison was able to fly standby on Chris' flight and we ended up sitting together the 5 hour and 30 minute flight.

Once in Vancouver we waited for an hour before departing Canada. Our flight took us up the British Columbia coastline to Alaska where we flew parallel with the coast to Anchorage, Alaska before heading out to sea. We flew towards Russia and then down it's coastline towards Japan.

Once over Japan we were able to see a bit of the Japanese landscape. It soon clouded over and we didn't get many photo opportunities. We did however, pass over Mt. Fuji. Even in the cloudy conditions we could see clearly the top of the mountain. It looked very majestic, being the only thing visible above the white clouds. It was quite amazing.

We were already absorbed into the Japanese culture on the flight... the attendants served Japanese dishes, we used chopsticks, and most of the passengers were Japanese!

The 11 hour flight ended at Kansai International Airport. We had no troubles at immigration or customs and no troubles finding our luggage. We heard some horror stories before we left, but were thankful everything went smoothly for us.

From there we took a train to NOVA's head office and met our apartment agent who took us to our new home to sleep for the next few days!