In celebration of Sam finishing school and frankly because I wanted to ski again, we’ve set off on another adventure to Japan.
As always, planning a grand adventure with four kids in tow has its own challenges, but having one of your kids struck down by a virus a week before you leave isn’t one that you need added to the list. Michael spent the early hours of Tuesday at Noarlunga hospital getting checked over. He was on the road to recovery (though voiceless) by the time that we left. Of course the challenge with something like that is wondering how long its going to be before the rest of the family is potentially infected. Thomas woke up Saturday morning and said, “Can you check my temperature, I think I’m getting sick.” With genuine care and concern I passed it off as nothing to worry about and told him he wasn’t allowed to go to the doctor because I wasn’t risking a no fly result. I really do care. He’s slowly improving and soldiering on, though now Sam seems to be having a turn. Mind you, given we were stuck on a flying incubator of re-cycled germ warfare for 10 hours, there’s always a risk that someone is going to infect you with something anyway. Hopefully everyone else survived our little contribution!
We even survived such little bumps as Michael advising us that he didn’t have any ski-pants the day before we were due to leave! This despite me trying to get everyone organised two weeks early.
Armed with improved knowledge from our first trip, the first thing that we changed this time around was the time allocated to the stop-over in Melbourne on our way out of the country. The first time we were quite rushed through the First Class Lounge and lamented that we didn’t have sufficient time to fully appreciate its splendour.
This time we booked a 5 hour stop-over. Excessive? Probably. Regrets? Not one. I did momentarily start to think I’d over done it when we were trying to get through customs and were told that they hadn’t opened our flight yet and so we wouldn’t be able to go through. Fortunately they took the opportunity to open it for us at that time and we were only delayed by the time that it took for us to walk from one end of the customs area to the next.
I’d been a tiny bit worried about how strictly they’d apply the access rules to the lounge given that we travel in a large pack and when the guy at the desk asked how many platinum members there were, I cringed a bit and answered only one, preparing to send two kids off on their own. I can’t be sure if it was the time of day or not, but the guy was nice enough to let us all through and we were close to the only people in there for the first hour or so. So we proceeded to indulge, knowing that we were facing a ten hour Jetstar flight.
When the closed the first class lounge we wandered down to the business class lounge where the girl on the desk did make mention of the fact that I was pushing the boundaries, but given how late it was and how little time we’d be in there for, we were once again allowed in. That was the end of our privileges for the night as we sucked up the fact that we were flying on reward points and therefore had to deal with life’s little first world struggles.
I don’t generally rate Jetstar. Maybe I’m a travel snob, or maybe I just resent the model of having to pay a little bit extra for anything that you can possibly think of (regardless of the carrier). It could even relate to how sore I was after getting off the flight to Bali last year. Regardless, it’s not that there’s anything significantly wrong with the service, I just prefer things differently, like being able to book us all on a single booking rather than having to split us over two. Because when that happens, they do weird things to you like give you seats on the opposite side of the plane to one another. Which is fine if there’s just an aisle down the middle, but moderately annoying when there’s two aisles and another three seats between you!
The main thing is that we arrived safely, though tired, with no-one sleeping particularly well on the plane (given some of the places I’ve slept in my life it frustrates me no end when I can’t have a decent kip on a plane).
We gathered our baggage, passed through the airport and collected train tickets with a minimum of fuss, mostly thanks to Caroline’s pre-trip organisational skills. We took out some cash and needed to break the denominations a bit, so it was straight to the kiosk and vending machines for a random drink and a snack.
The further north-west we headed, the more signs there were that it was winter. Our connections all proved to be very tight, but we managed not to miss any of them. The result of this was that while man-handling all the luggage we skipped two important elements of our planned activities. One, we didn’t get a chance to get any clothes out of our luggage and secondly, there was no time to grab any food for lunch.
The scenery became whiter the further we went. The skies were clear and it was quite simply stunning. There’d clearly been a large dump of fresh snow, because it was pristinely white and even the trees all held decent amounts on their bare branches. It was quite spectacular, especially as we headed into the mountains.
By the time we arrived it was snowing quite heavily which meant that Sam, in his shorts, and me, in a t-shirt drew some rather funny looks from a few of the locals that were watching us.
Apparentely there's been about a metre and a half of snow over the last 2 days!
We dashed into the shelter of the nearest hotel and used their lobby to equip ourselves a little better for the walk through the snow drifts to our own establishment.
Food was another story. I made a commitment this trip that I wouldn’t be quite the same “it’s got to be Japanese food” bastard that I was last time around and that we would actively stop what we were doing to ensure that we actually ate at reasonable hours. Given we arrived around 4pm and hadn’t eaten anything substantial since the night before, things weren’t quite up to plan on that account. We started to set off in search of food, but it was still snowing, the wind was whipping it into our faces and to be honest, we walked in the wrong direction. So we abandoned that idea and decided to have dinner at the hotel.
It turned out to be a set menu, something else of a no-no based on the kids’ experiences from two years ago. Given the choice of the Pork, Chicken of beef fillet meal, we each made a choice only to be told that Pork was actually the only choice.
It was a nicely presented meal (though I did question the bit where they gave Emily some saki (She didn’t drink it)) but not all the flavours were up our alley. I think its safe to say that the chances of anyone ordering Soba for the rest of the trip are remote. Really really remote. It won’t happen.
We survived though and finished the night off with some games before Caroline and Emily (at Emily’s insistence no less) headed off to the onsen. Talk about a urn around. Two years ago, it was midnight bathing and dodging the remote chance that someone else might be in there and this time she’s the one insisting on it! There’s hope for her yet.
Another aspect we prepared for this time around was our dependence on electronics for various enternainment, memory capture and well ... to avoid (or cause) war within the family. Charging the myriad devices that acoompany us is a challenge, so we brought a couple of power boards along with our adaptors. The only problem was that the adaptors weren't quite right. After 24 hours of travel, things were getting desperate. it turned out there was a USB port on the TV that would trickle a feed to one device at a time, but frankly that wasn't going to cut it. Fortunatel some very amatreur electrrical modifications to one of the adapators provided the relief required and everyone will be sleeping easier. Another first world problem averted.
That’s more than enough for day 1. Further updates will of course depend on how much blog-worthy material and time the family provides me with.
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