Going to Japan

March 31 - Not a good start to our trip to Japan. Luckily, we got to the airport in Auckland early (those of you who have traveled with me will understand!) We returned our hire car and went to the Qantas check-in. (Yes, of course I had gone on line yesterday to make sure the flight was still a go!) The pleasant young man swiped our passports and then looked perplexed and asked us when we had changed our flight. Since we hadn’t changed the flight, we looked equally perplexed, but after a long phone call to somebody high up, apparently somebody HAD changed our flight and we were now booked on an Air New Zealand flight that left 1 hour earlier than the Qantas flight. (Hurray for being anal-retentive and being early!) So we were in time for the NZ flight and arrived in Sydney in plenty of time to catch our connection to Tokyo (Zoe - they didn’t arrest me at the border for non-payment of my toll fine!) We dutifully got on the flight to Tokyo, along with about 100 Japanese school children (and this time I’m not exaggerating) plus a couple of hundred other assorted bodies. We sat - and we sat - and we sat some more, until the captain came on the intercom to tell us that a passenger had had a medical emergency just prior to boarding and they had to find his bag before we could take off. About ½ hour later, the captain came on the intercom again to say that now they had found the bag, but we were now into Sydney’s night flight curfew and they had to get permission from Canberra to take off after 11 pm. About ½ later, he came on AGAIN, and told us (but not exactly in these words) some yahoo in Canberra had decided that rather than upset a few Sydney people with the noise of our jet taking off at night, we all had to disembark, wait to pick up our bags, go through customs, be taken to a hotel and stay the night in Sydney. I can’t imagine what it cost the airline. So we ended up in an airport hotel in Sydney at about 1 a.m. being told that our wakeup call would be at 4:30 a.m. So up we get (we’re on the 7th floor) and take our bags to the elevator where about 1/7 of the 300+ people on the flight were waiting. After hanging around for 10 minutes or so, we decided to take the stairs (the bags were really heavy by the bottom!) and we eventually got to the airport where we went through the whole check-in procedure again, in the process of which Mr. Hartley lost his boarding card. We are now actually on our way to Japan (I’m typing in the aircraft) and should arrive late today, which basically means that we have lost a day in Tokyo. Hey ho - traveling joys. At least we haven’t missed our connection with our tour in Tokyo, but I will be most interested to find out who, in their wisdom, changed our flight but didn’t bother to let us know. It’s about a 9 ½ hour flight from Sydney to Tokyo and thank goodness for modern technology - the movies etc. are great - there is a huge choice and enough to keep you busy for the whole time if you want. I’ve already watched Men Who Stare at Goats (OK-ish) and Up (which was cute) plus lots of tennis on the sports channel.
Later - more time in airports. We stood in line for an hour to get through immigration (luckily there was a very pleasant American women next to us in line so we chatted our way through), got our bags and headed out into Narita Airport which is pretty much a city in its own right. We had planned to catch a train into Tokyo (a cab would have cost about $250 as it’s about 90km from the airport to the city). I couldn’t believe how helpful everyone was (and how good their English was). The lady at the information desk, the ticket seller, a “process the lost-looking tourists” lady and a lovely man on the train all went out of their way to make sure we knew which train to get on, when to get off and where to change platforms. We found the hotel after wandering in circles for a while - it’s very western except the toilets (Jan - NOW I understand why you wanted one!) which have all these amazing bells and whistles you can push to make exciting things happen after you’ve done what you need to do! The toilet in the airport even had one button with a musical note on it, but I didn’t quite dare to push it!!! Anyway, I was bushed and got straight into bed, but Hartley was hot to trot so he went out into the night and ended up in a sushi bar, drinking beer with a local!