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RTW Trip Day #1: Goodbye Calgary, Hello Tokyo - Our 100‑Day Family Sabbatical Begins
- andrewsco3
- Sep 29, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: 22 hours ago
Welcome to our Round‑the‑World Family Sabbatical diary! We’re a Calgary‑based family travelling for 100 days, documenting each step so other families can get an honest, real‑life look at long‑term travel with kids - the highs, the chaos, and everything in between.
Today’s entry is Day 1, where months of planning finally turned into reality as we flew from Calgary to Tokyo and officially kicked off our adventure.
You can browse the full 100‑day contents list here, but for now, join us as we say our goodbyes, navigate a ten‑hour flight, deal with a memorable vomiting episode on the Narita Express, and settle into our very first hotel in Japan.
Day 1 Highlights at a Glance
Emotional goodbyes to family, friends, and Ellie
10‑hour Calgary to Tokyo flight with kids
Navigating Narita Airport, Suica cards & train tickets
Narita Express ride (complete with a vomit incident)
Checking into the Prince Sakura Tower Tokyo
Goodbyes, and the Start of Our Family Sabbatical
After 18 months of planning, saving and thinking about it non stop, we finally started our family sabbatical and set off on our RTW 100 day trip of a lifetime.
For about 17 of those months it felt so far away and then suddenly the last few weeks passed so quickly that it all felt like a blur!
Now that we've landed in Tokyo there are so many emotions running through my head. A blast from the past, but Owen Wilson summed it up perfectly in the movie Armageddon!
I got that "excited/scared" feeling. Like 98% excited, 2% scared. Or maybe it's more. It could be, it could be 98% scared, 2% excited but that's what makes it so intense, it's so - confused. I can't really figure it out.
Planning this trip has been our world for the last 18 months, and with all the excitement building it was easy to forget how hard it would be to leave our home, family and friends.
Saying goodbye to Ellie was especially tough on the kids - they love her so much, but she's in great hands with Sandy!
It was also hard to say goodbye to some of our great friends here in Calgary, especially Brie, who very kindly drove us to the airport and gave us a great send off.
The Flight From Calgary to Tokyo
You'd think we'd be used to long flights having flown to the UK so much, but that felt like a really long flight.
We got a pretty good deal on our economy ticket, but I definitely wish I earned enough money to fly the whole family in business class! After ten hours crammed into an economy seat, pretty much every muscle in my body is telling me it hates me!
The kids on the other hand were perfectly happy staring at their TV screens for ten hours straight. I'm pretty sure they could watch Harry Potter non stop for 24 hours if we let them. Life lessons are not learned on a plane, that's for sure.
We managed a little bit of sleep but not much, so once we landed everyone was ready to grab a quick bite, check into the hotel and get some rest.
Arriving in Tokyo and the Prince Sakura Hotel
Arriving in Tokyo was a pretty surreal experience. It was everything I expected it to be... and at the same time nothing like what I imagined.
Finding the right train and figuring out the station and tickets was a bit of a challenge, but we got there eventually. We had already downloaded our adult Suica cards onto our phones, but we still had to pick up some physical ones for the girls. We then bought our tickets for the ~1 hour ride on the Narita Express to Shinagawa station which is just a 5 minute walk from our hotel.
Twenty minutes into the train, Jess went pale and everything came back up - a stark reminder that real family travel isn’t always Instagram‑ready!!!
We got to our hotel at about 7.30pm and our first impressions of the Prince Sakura Hotel were amazing! It's a super fancy hotel and one of the nicest places we’ll be staying on our entire trip.... so it's all downhill from here!
There is zero chance we could have afforded to stay here if it weren’t for redeeming Marriott points, which is a common theme on this trip!
More details on the hotel to come, as we’ll be staying here for the next five nights. Tomorrow we can finally get out and start exploring Tokyo and kick off our round-the-world adventure!
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