Greetings!

WOW, can you believe it's April already? Spring is definitely in the air!!!

Well, I had an interesting little adventure last month. A very good friend of mine (Shawn) is now living in Tokyo so my other good friend (Brent) and I decided to fly over for a quick visit. We'd planned the trip for months and since neither of us had ever been to Japan before, we were really looking forward to the trip and also seeing our buddy.

The devastating earthquake/tsunami occurred on the Friday and we were scheduled to depart on the Saturday morning, so we had to make a quick decision whether to go or not. After skyping with Shawn, he told us that he thought everything would return to normal in Tokyo pretty quickly and he recommended we still come and not cancelling our trip.    

So with some apprehension, Brent and I arrived into Tokyo on the Sunday night. Since our flights arrived late in the evening we had pre-booked a hotel close to Narita. We checked-in and went to bed and In the middle of the night there was a very strong after-shock (I believe it was 6.2) that woke us both up and was a bit scary, and there was a smaller one a short time afterwards.  I was regretting leaving on the trip.  

The next morning we were having breakfast in the hotel restaurant when Shawn called us and asked if we were sitting down because he had some very bad news. He told us that the situation with the nuclear reactors was very bad now, trains weren't running and the government was warning of another possible very strong earthquake in the coming days. OMG! With that news we decided that the best thing to do would be to leave Japan immediately. So Brent and I went directly back to the airport and started looking for a flight out ASAP.

The situation at Narita was a little crazy and we had 2 more aftershocks (and I have to be honest I was starting to panic big time), but we finally found a flight leaving in one hour's time to Singapore so we booked it and high-tailed it to the gate. Our flight had a slightly late departure and by the time we finally lifted-off I was so relived. BTW, we got to fly on the new A380 aircraft and I loved it. Very cool!!!     

We ended up spending a few days in Singapore and also Seoul to try to salvage our trip and we did have a good time, but of course both of us would rather have been in Japan and spending time with Shawn. It also made it difficult to enjoy ourselves knowing what was going on in Japan and we were worried about our friend.  

If you would like to see a video from our day trip to the North Korea border and the demilitarized zone you can click HERE.  

Have a great month and chat with you soon. 

Sincerely,