Interesting start of the trip ...

I arrived at Arlanda Terminal 2 in good time, checked in on a vending machine and saw that the plane to Paris, where I would change, was delayed an hour. I went to the check-in counter and asked (maybe a little bit naive) weather the plane possibly would wait us, since the delay would give me only 15 minutes for changing plane in Paris. Clearly they do not, but the lady said that if we miss the flight to Tokyo Air France will pay for hotels, etc., in Paris, and then I take the next plan tomorrow night = a whole day of delay.

Not exactly what I wanted, so I ran away to the service desk and asked if they could book me on another flight to Paris. But no, there was nothing. I explained that I really have to be in Tokyo on Tuesday. After a couple of minutes, the man at the service counter said that a possible solution was that I should try to catch an Air China aircraft to Beijing that would take off in 50 minutes, and then take a flight from there to Tokyo after a five-hour stop over in Beijing. I would then arrive in Tokyo 19:15 on Tuesday, just over an hour later than my original itinerary. However, it was unclear whether the check-in was already closed, so he advised me to run from Terminal 2 to Terminal 5 as fast as I could while he called and gave them a heads up that I was on my way.

I ran like a madman and arrived in a few minutes, had just enough time to check in the bag before they closed check-in.

The staff calls and announces that there will be one more bag.

Sweaty as hell after running FAST, but I managed to get on the flight!

Flight to Tokyo booked!

After some negotiations with my wife about a week when she could take care of the kids herself, I found a week that worked. Depart around 8-9 September and home again around 14-15 September. I started searching for flights on a large Swedish site that aggregates flights from all different airlines (flygresor.se) and it turned out that many airlines flies to Tokyo. However, it was not so easy to see what day it was extra expensive to fly, so I went in to sas.se where who has a low fare calendar, which made ​​it easy to see which days that have extra pressure on travel to or from Tokyo, while on other days it is cheaper. 

 By choosing departure 9 September and go back on September 15, the ticket was about 1500 USD cheaper than if I traveled back home a day earlier.

 
With that realization, I went back to Flygresor.se and was looking for a flight that went late at night from Stockholm and had short wait beetween connecting flights (as there is no direct flight between Stockholm and Tokyo). Best time for an OK price was with Air France for about 1000 USD and then I went straight to airfrance.se and booked where it was even cheaper. We went on our honeymoon-trip with Air France so I have a special relationship to that particilar airline and look forward to flying with them again

So now I go Monday, September 9 at 19.30, arriving in Tokyo the day after 18.00. With seven hour time difference is it then 11:00 on the day in Sweden so the best is probably to start with a power nap and then to go out on the town at once!