First 787 Delivery & Trip to Japan

We did it!  We delivered the first 787 to the launch customer ANA. It was an exciting day on Sunday, September 25th as I sat at the table as we transferred title of the very first 787 to ANA. It has been a long journey and yet it is one amazing airplane.  Here's a few pictures from the delivery celebration on Monday. For those of you who watched it on http://www.newairplane.com/787/firstDelivery/#/en/home/

you saw that it was a rainy day, but we were warm inside to have finally reached this milestone.  This is a long blog entry - you might want to grab a pillow...

 Here's the view from the second row where I was sitting with the ANA team. 

Here I am with the local ANA team that I work with and the Boeing quality rep that takes care of ANA.

 My smiling face right after the event was over.

 My smiling face in front or the airplane after the event.

Monday evening we had a delivery celebration event at The Future of Flight - a Boeing facility next to where the airplane is built and tested.  Here I am with some members of the ANA and Boeing team at the event.

They had a live band and an amazing evening filled with speeches, video clips highlighting the journey to this point and then a cool airplane "reveal." It was rockin' and pretty amazing.

The next morning I was off to Tokyo early via San Francisco as the flight via San Fran was the only flight that would get me and other Boeing persons to Tokyo early enough to be there for the "arrival celebration" at 5:00 p.m. Wednesday - Tokyo time.  The other cool thing about this trip was that I had decided to take Mackenzie with me. She would hang out the hotel while I was away at the celebration, dinners and work and then we would have a few days to spend together in Japan. Way cool!

The ANA 787 took off from Everett at 6:35 a.m. Tuesday morning (and as I was at the airport I did not get to see it) and landed in Japan a little after 9:00 a.m. Wednesday morning.  The photo above is of the ANA 787 touching down on Japan for the first time.

We landed around 2:30 p.m. at Narita and went straight to ANA's facilities at Haneda airport for the celebration that started at 5:00 p.m. I have been visiting Haneda and working with the ANA team since late 2003. It was wonderful to be there and see the airplane in their hangar.  Mackenzie waited with some friends in the local Boeing office while I was at the event.

Here's a shot of the airplane during the arrival reception. Following the reception we went to our hotel and checked in. I then left Mackenzie in our hotel room as I headed off to a dinner. Mackenzie seemed to do alright ordering room service - was the most expensive udon noodle soup and soft drink she will ever order :) - about 3000 yen or about $40. I had some work the next day and another dinner Thursday evening and other than that we had some time Thursday during the day and then all day Friday, Saturday and half a day Sunday to explore Tokyo together.

Here we are on the 37th floor enjoying breakfast in the executive lounge. The building directly in front of us is where ANA's headquarters is located.

We visited the grounds of the Imperial Palace and Mackenzie had fun trying out a little of the Japanese she had learned last year during her two semesters of Japanese at our local community college.

Not much different from downtown Everett, Washington :-) The building directly behind her is the same building we see from the executive lounge - ANA's headquarters building.

The Imperial Palace grounds were beautiful. The weather was great too.

Now this was one stop that was not on my list of things to do - the zoo - the Ueno Zoo is the oldest in Japan.  We were looking for the museum Mackenzie read a sign (in Japanese) that noted that the Zoo had pandas she said, "Let's go, Dad"  We went and had a great time together.

 Here we are enjoying a pork cutlet (tonkatsu) from one of my favorite places - have been going here since 1989. Yummm...

We went out to Kamakura and visited some shrines and this large statue of Buddha.

We also enjoyed yakisoba and okonomiyaki - another few of our favorite foods...

Well, the high life had to end sometime and Friday night we moved to our Japanese Inn - Ryoukan near Asakusa. Here's our sweet suite where we stayed Friday and Saturday night. It was cool to see Mackenzie get to experience the way I slept for 2 years as a missionary in Japan a "few" years ago.

Here's a picture of the Asakusa temple area.

Kenzie and I visited a museum of the history of the Tokyo area - it was cool - here's what my life might have been like had I been born a few decades ago in Japan.

Here's Kenzie in the Ginza area at night. It was cool and yet due to power restrictions still in place from the impact of the earthquake/tsunami, many of the large lights in Ginza were not lit.

Mackenzie had fun shopping in Ginza - I was happy that Forever 21 and H&M were there - at least there was something she could buy that was less than a Gucci purse. :)  She bought herself the cute hat that you will see in some of the pictures and some jewelry.

I took Mackenzie to the fish market early one morning.

How about these tuna? Makes me hungry for some sushi... Kenzie said she will pass.

We had a ton of fun riding the trains and subways - Kenzie was a pro after a few days.

Here we are in front of another one of my favorite places to eat - New Torigin with yakitori and kamameishi. Yum. 

Sunday morning we went to church and the saw the Tokyo temple that is right next to the church. We went to an English speaking ward and were excited to meet these two sister missionaries who have been out about five months.

 Here we are in front of the temple.

After church we had to head back to the inn, change clothes and then take a train to the airport. Here's Kenzie snoozing - we had a fun and memorable time. Thanks for suffering through the pictures. It is fun to share the delivery of the first 787 and the great time Mackenzie and I had together.