We are getting to the end of my trip report of my epic around the world journey with my son to Egypt and Japan. If you want to read more about the travels, there is a table of contents near the bottom of this post. Now we are going to talk about my final day home, which ended up being a 37 hour day.

Walking Plus A Train To Osaka

It started at 4 a.m. Japan time on Thursday April 13th. We had a 7 a.m. flight to catch out of Osaka Kansai Airport (KIX). After taking the Shinkansen train from Tokyo to Osaka and then spending a few days at Super Nintendo World in Universal Studios Japan, we had taken the train from the main part of Osaka down to an airport hotel near KIX, where we stayed the night. I had set the alarm for 4 a.m. – even though we were pretty close to the airport, I like to give myself plenty of time

(SEE ALSO: HELP! I’m wasting DAYS of my life in airports!)

But then I realized that the first train to the airport didn’t come till 5:30 a.m. and the hotel shuttle didn’t start till 5:45 a.m. I used that time to just hang out in the hotel lobby and call home. I was a little nervous about there not being as much time, but it was no problem at all.

Plane To Tokyo

The Osaka KIX airport was pretty much empty, and going through security was no problem. In fact, we got to our gate so early that we were literally the only ones in the gate area. ANA was flying a huge 787 between Osaka and Tokyo and my son and I were the only people there. Eventually more people showed up, though the plane was probably barely half full.

More Trains Crossing Tokyo

Our flight from Osaka arrived at Tokyo Haneda (HND) airport and we were flying out of Tokyo Narita airport (NRT). We decided to take the subway and train from Haneda to Narita, and even though I’m not sure I quite understand how the Tokyo subway system works, we made it. I was actually about JPY1000 short on our train cards, and so I was hoping to find a money changing place as I thought that would be better than getting out JPY10,000 from an ATM, but even though we had been traveling for 4 hours, it was still only 8:30 a.m. and nothing was open 🙁

And Now… We Wait

Eventually we made it over to Tokyo Narita, and spent a few hours in the Tokyo Narita Terminal 1 ANA Lounge. It was a nice though not amazing lounge, and we ended up spending about 7 or 8 hours here, because our inbound plane was delayed due to a recent volcanic eruption in Northern Russia. It was originally supposed to take off at 4:55 p.m. Tokyo time but didn’t end up departing until nearly 7p.m. By that time, we had been up for nearly 15 hours but we were not even halfway through our travel day!

13 Hour Plane To Toronto

Flying Air Canada business class from Tokyo to Toronto was definitely the way to go! After a quick dinner onboard, I decided to go to sleep and was able to get about 5 or 6 hours of solid sleep. Although my seat controls were broken, the seat at least did go all the way flat, and it got me some outrageous Air Canada broken seat compensation.

The problem was that the delay of our flight was making our connection QUITE tight. Originally we were supposed to have 3 hours at Toronto before our flight home to Cincinnati. But our flight ended up landing at 6:14p.m. Eastern time, and our connecting flight was scheduled to take off at 6:55.

A Sprint Through The Airport (And Another Plane)

40 minutes did not seem like a lot of time to go through Toronto airport, clear U.S. security, immigration and customs AND make it to our new gate at pretty much the furthest gate possible (in the 90s if you’re familiar with YYZ). Thankfully we were in business class so we were able to literally be the first people off of the airplane. We ran through the airport and although there was a bit of a line for security, immigration was super fast (thanks Global Entry!) and we made it with time to spare.

We even had time to stop and take a sweaty tarmac selfie.

Sweaty and out of breath…. but at the plane

A Car Ride (But Not an Uber!) Home

Originally we had planned on taking an Uber home from the airport, but the prices were SO ridiculous that I ended up calling my wife to come get me. We arrived home at about 10 p.m. after a 4 a.m. start (with an extra 13 hours of time change thrown in)

(SEE ALSO: What is going on with Uber?)

A 37 Hour Day

Thursday April 13th ended up being a 37 hour day for me due to the 13 hour time difference between Japan and US Eastern time. And I ended up actively traveling through it for 31 hours, on nearly every form of transportation possible. It felt great to get back home and sleep in my own bed!

What’s your longest travel day? Leave your stories in the comments below

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