Back in Japan

I am back in Tokyo, Japan once again and have taken advantage of a few technologies that have always existed but I haven't used until now. The flight from the West coast of the United States generally takes about 10 hours. Fortunately there are a lot of technologies that help make the trip go more quickly.

I have known that underneath the seat in front of me contains an outlet capable of charging laptop computers but have never bothered using it until now. I didn't print out my itinerary for the trip and so as I was filling out my customs and immigration paperwork, I plugged in my laptop and pulled my hotel information from it. As my laptop was plugged in, I could use it for other things during the trip without having to worry about draining my battery. I also plugged in my iPhone to the USB port on the plane. That kept my phone charged for the trip so I could do important things like play games.

There was nobody in the seat next to me for the flight and I appreciated that a lot. I left the US on Sunday which puts me into Japan late Monday night because of the International Date Line. So my first day in the office will be Tuesday. Most people like to fly to Japan and start the day on Monday. So if I left on Saturday, the flight would have been full. My flight was relatively empty and I was able to re-purpose the screen in the seat next to me. Instead of using it to watch a movie, I had it display our position on a map of the Pacific Ocean. When I would wake up from a quick nap, I could instantly see how long I had been asleep. It was kind of nice to keep up.

At one point during the flight, I had 3 displays all going at once and they all kept me entertained. I had a movie in one, our position in another, and information on my laptop in another. It was kind of nice and I passed the time nicely during the flight.