Singapore
Uneventful arrival in Singapore, did Carl's usual entry into Singapore to say hi to United Airlines' staff, quick visit to the SATS Premier Lounge, where some weird half-power-outage was going on. Then back to the gate to meet up with Kathie and back on to N36962, this time in Carl's usual economy seat.
Six hours out from Singapore, not too far east of Japan, both weather radars on the plane failed, and Captain Daniel made the decision to divert to Tokyo, as you no longer have ETOPS capability without any working weather radars. Arrival in a rainy and somewhat windy Narita was uneventful, United TechOps was not able to fix the plane before the crew timed out, and apparently it was coming up to a holiday week in Japan, so hotels were very busy. Aka my first international diversion was about to get very interesting.
Fortunately, Kathie remembered her friends riding in the back of the airplane, and as a Global Services customer, United ushered all the GS's and their friends off the plane first to take care of them, while everyone else (including the 1K's) were more or less left to the wolves. Hard to blame United in this case as hotels were extremely limited in Narita; they got only 15 rooms and they had a nearly full 787-9 unexpectedly in their laps (close to 252 passengers plus crew!). Add in Carl's usual complicated itinerary, and it took quite a bit of effort by United's Premium Services agents, Maki and Izumi, in taking care of us.
Maki and Izumi handled all of this with aplomb, escorting us through immigration and customs, even to the hotel shuttle bus-- they were an exemplary example of Japanese hospitality and customer service.
The Narita Tobu Hotel is an older hotel with 484 rooms, United took the 15 they were able to get and put us in three of them. Had some griping from the hotel staff, but they were able to accommodate us, and we were able to at least get a late dinner at the hotel buffet, which, oddly, was a mix of mediocre Italian and Japanese food. Was a bit of a drive from the airport to the hotel, although as we would find out in the morning, the other way around is extremely quick (less than five minutes), which I guess makes sense if you have to make the choice.