9 Mar, Day 1: Expect A Bumpy Ride

Tom is the airport driver

I'm starting to think this flight is going to be very interesting, because just everything being on time is boring, right? Ok, "interesting" is the wrong word. I have now gone through the stages of denial, anxiety, and disbelief to arrive at acceptance. The pilot on the flight to Denver announced that the ride would be bumpy, but that was negligible compared to what was to come. Now I'm sitting in Denver, listening to one announcement after the other, constantly pushing the departure time back more and more. Right now, I have 25 minutes to clear immigration and security in Tokyo to make my next flight. That is almost not do-able, but who knows, we might make up a few minutes during the flight. Yeah, I almost laughed at that thought too.
So, the inbound flight was coming from Houston, where there are severe thunderstorms. After that flight being delayed for 3.5 hours, they decided to switch to the aircraft coming in from Tokyo.

Root Down, healthy food restaurant

Things were looking up, since United was going to try to get that sucker cleaned pronto, board us and push us out a few minutes sooner than the delay time. Then another announcement: plane came in, but there was a medical emergency on board and they couldn't let anybody deplane until that person could get off. So for now we're delayed 1.5 hours. I'm saying for now, because there's still no plane at the gate and we're supposed to leave in 30 minutes. I also found out that there is only one flight per day from Tokyo to Komatsu and that one's at 6:30 p.m. - the one I'm likely to miss.
I hope the agents in Tokyo have a plan! I did get an upgrade to Economy Plus out of this so I could sit towards the front of the plane and hit the ground running!