Japan: traveling with a toddler

The airplane ride with a toddler wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but it was still exhausting for all of us. The little girl got very little sleep on the plane, but nevertheless behaved really well with only few protesting screams against tiredness and over-stimulation. And for me the time went by faster as I was busy trying to entertain her; get her to sleep, to drink, to eat; trying to figure out a comfortable position for myself without waking her up; to eat without her overturning the food on both of us. I wish we had a separate seat for her. I’m grateful for other babies on the plane (she loved watching them) and on-demand entertainment with good cartoons (like 2 episodes of In The Night Garden).

On board the Shinkansen bullet train

On our arrival to Utsunomiya after 12 hours on the plane and another 3 on trains we were exhausted and collapsed into bed as soon as we could at about 5:30pm - we would’ve been happy to sleep even earlier, but the hotel wouldn’t check us in before 4pm. Exhausted we slept until 7am the next morning thus beating the jetlag.

Every following day the little girl would eventually pass out in her stroller or on my shoulder for a pithily brief nap. She slept well at night next to us, occasionally kicking us in her sleep and often taking up most of the bed space by rolling about and sleeping at every possible position except parallel one to us. However the daily lack of sleep kept on accumulating eventually resulting in the session of protesting screaming on the last day when she desperately wanted to sleep while we had to pack.

Our return flight was a day one and I’m starting to agree with Clive that they are easier than night ones as we could be louder, sillier and more active. Since everyone always complains about their inability to sleep on the plane, I was surprised to notice a lot of people sleeping for long periods of time. But we didn’t get much sleep. Poor Cat asleep on the way home from airport. Our attempt to wake her up on the arrival home was met with horrible loud screeching; and so we let her sleep. She woke at 3 am for the next two mornings, but I think she is finally back to more normal schedule after staying awake from 8:40 to 19:30 yesterday. Annoyingly I still woke up at 3am today – looks like I’m struggling to flight my own jetlag while having to deal with hers.