| Current mood: |  cheerful |
| Current music: | "春夏秋冬" ♪ アリス九號. |
秋 ・ day one
NOVEMBER 24TH
Our trip, as could only be hoped for, actually started off fantastically! After arriving at Brisbane International Airport a good three hours before our flight (at 6:00am to be exact), and then waiting around for another half an hour or so for Nat and Sally to arrive, we managed to scurry into the baggage check-in line just before a huge tour group… only to be briefly delayed when we actually made it to the counter by the fact the guy had run out of boarding passes to print up. The guy ran off to get some replacements and then upgraded us from economy class to business class at random and for no extra charge! Grinning about this to ourselves, we went to find our parents who had wandered off to get coffee and gloat about how awesome our luck was.
Of course, we seemed to speak too soon. After having a quick breakfast, we left to go down the point of no return (customs) only to get massively held up in line. Somehow we had managed to join the express line for crew members and had nearly two flight crews dive in before us as they announced that our flight was actually boarding. Naturally, I freaked out and had a bit of a panic attack (read: cry) in the line before we managed to finally make it through and hurried off to find our flight. Fortunately, it turned out that boarding had been slightly delayed despite the announcement, so my panic was for nothing… as it usually is.
Nat & Sally at breakfast in the Brisbane International Airport.The flight itself was relatively uneventful. I ended up with the window seat and was naturally very thrilled to get to spend the next nine hours gazing at the endless sky (♥) and occasional island that we passed over around Papua New Guinea and Guam. As for business class… well, I’m never flying anything else again! We had out own personal TVs, big and comfy seats; plenty of legroom and the food was absolutely superb! Definitely fly with JAL if you ever go to Japan, the stewardesses are lovely and it was a really good flight despite having to spend all day in a seat next to Sally, who was honestly very boring and spend most of her time watching movies. I forced myself to watch “Hairspray” and was very grateful when Nat invaded our space from the seat in front to chat with us.
Nine hours later we landed in Japan and breezed through customs without any trouble, and the same can be said for obtaining our JR Passes from the Narita Terminal 2 station. We made our way down to the platform after playing with the vending machines, only to be highly confused when a train left in one direction, followed by another going in the opposite direction on the same tracks a few minutes later. Naturally, we were highly confused and went to find a guard to question about whether we were in the right place or not… which was amusing in itself; Nat and Sally returned with an epic story about how Nat’s Japanese extended to “Kono platform wa [thumbs up] desu ka?” and how Nat had somehow managed to confuse the guard into thinking that he was asking if the trains collided by questioning said guard about the different directions those two trains had gone on the same tracks.
Vending machines of epic win!
Nat & Sally being lost and confused in Narita Terminal 2 station.Catching the train was little drama after that, and we had a really great trip through Tokyo, arriving in one piece at Shibuya station about an hour and a half later.
Cue another panic attack from me.
Somehow, we managed to get ourselves miserably lost in Shibuya station and ended up having to plead with an American family for help. There were just so many people and we kept getting in the way with our bags and general lack of knowledge. It was not a good first experience of Tokyo
at all and I admit to hating it at first, wondering how we would ever survive the next two weeks like this!
Fortunately, the Americans were very helpful and the father carried my luggage around for me whilst explaining to us about how the trains worked and that we would have to get a subway line to our hotel. He took us all the way to the gate for the Ginza line, which was really great of him and then left us to fend for ourselves. We managed okay, and had a very interesting time trying to carry our suitcases up the MASSIVE three flights of stairs at Aoyama Ichome station. Exiting the station though, was almost as bad as getting lost in Shibuya station. We had
no idea at all of where our hotel was from there, and upon asking a Japanese man very politely with my map in hand where we could find the hotel, he basically flipped me off and walked away saying he didn’t understand what I was asking, which was total bullshit. Because how hard is it to understand “Where is this hotel?” Ugh, not a good first impression of the Japanese people either… though fortunately we managed to find more Americans who were coincidentally staying in our hotel and walked us all the way there, which was really nice of them since they were on their way out for the evening.
We checked into the hotel okay and dumped our stuff in the tiny hotel room before going out to investigate the three convenience stores we had walked past in hopes of finding something for dinner. Funnily enough, we met a German-born Australian guy from our hotel in the store and had dinner with him in his hotel room. We talked for ages and didn’t end up going back to our hotel room until around midnight, making it a very long day for us indeed.
END DAY 1
