Japan 2019 - Day 1

So starts another Temby adventure to Japan. We’ve been counting the days down for some time now and it almost seems surreal that we reached the point where we actually get to start our holiday.

The first joy of any holiday is the packing exercise. Will there be too much? Will there be any room for souvenirs? Will there be any measurable level of sanity left by the time we actually get to the airport?

The packing wasn’t as bad as it could have been, other than the fact that kids tend to do these things at the last minute, which means when it comes to things like ski-pants, trying them on 24 hours (or less) before you leave really doesn’t leave much room for alternate plans if you find out you’ve put weight on since you skied two years ago! Fortunately we have enough accumulated stuff that we will at least have the basics covered, though we’ve hit a point where there might be some goggles required.

Despite efforts to have everything sorted on the weekend to reduce the stress of the night before departure, kids buggering off to see friends and attend parties and the like didn’t see us quite get to where we wanted to. Given we had a 6am departure out of Adelaide, midnight wasn’t quite the right time to be getting to bed ahead of 11.5 hours of flying and some 2.5 hours of trains along with all the associated walking and lugging around of said luggage!

We woke early, with everything ready to go, with my Dad doing us the heroic favour of clambering out of bed early enough to get us to the airport on time. Given the scale and logistics of a Temby’s on Tour vacation a maxi-taxi was ordered to help with transport.

Sam altered us at 4am to the fact that we’d received notifications from Qantas that check-in would close in 25 minutes which spiked my stress levels a bit when having input all the relevant information I was advised that there was a problem, checking us in and to try again later. After attempting the process about six times I was really starting to worry that we’d be pushing the limits to be at the airport in time to deal with check-in if the system didn’t support us. Fortunately about 10 mins before we were scheduled to leave home it was sorted out and we had boarding passes! Whew.

10 minutes after that I was starting to worry about why I’d received no notifications for the cab I’d booked for 4:45 pickup. I’d been a little distracted from the matter because of the whole check-in thing, but quickly shifted focus to find out at 4:42am that I’d booked the cab to arrive at 4:45pm. Oh crap! Now getting a taxi would likely have been achievable but getting a maxi taxi at that time within 10 minutes … start to push the proverbial up hill I’m afraid. I was starting to formulate plans to abandon our car in the IKEA car-park and leaning on my Dad to collect it later when Sam suggested that one of his friends that lives nearby might be awake. Turns out he was and I have to send out a massive vote of thanks to Ned for scrambling to ours and helping to get us to the airport with just enough time to swing through the Qantas lounge.

The next little hiccup occurred when I boarded the plane and went through the process of grabbing my ‘flight essentials’. The glasses that I usually have with me were nowhere to be seen. Not what one needs ahead of a couple of weeks overseas. Fortunately I had a back up pair stashed in my hand luggage – not something I’ve necessarily done before. Chalk that up for a minor win.

One of the joys of having flown so much over the last couple of years is the benefit of airline status, which in this case means I’m eligible to get into the International First Class lounge in Melbourne, along with a guest and any kids under the age of 18. By the time we got that far through the process with a short stop-over between flights, we were only left with about 15 minutes. I thought that might have let me squeeze the adult kids in given the short time frame, but sadly they claimed they were really busy and so couldn’t do so. Thomas was the one that felt most ripped off as it would have been the first time he’d been allowed in there since turning 18. Not that access to the bar would really have been needed at 0830.

The trip from Melbourne to Narita was uneventful which is always good. With Thomas having missed out on the lounge, I thought I’d remind him that the beauty of international flying with a full service airline was the free bar. I was mildly amused when he wasn’t quite sure of the protocol for getting drink, but rest assured, it was sorted quickly and he took sufficient advantage without being silly.

We landed in Narita and had navigated most of what we needed to in the airport and were just starting to head toward the train for our next leg when a young airport attended came up to us looking a bit concerned. Which turned out to be a good thing because we had apparently walked off with someone else’s suitcase from the baggage claim. It was exactly the same as ours and in our haste, no one had thought to confirm that the tags indicated that it was actually ours. We dodged another bullet there!

We sorted out train passes and found our train and made our way into Tokyo where we had about half an hour to dip the taste buds back into some of the local cuisine, grabbing some bits and pieces to eat on the way to Nagano, our final destination for the day.

We all found something we liked and were immediately reminded of just how much waste is generated from a small shopping venture in Japan. Let’s just say that there’s not a reusable bag in sight and single-use plastic is off the scale.

Anyway, we’re only 6 minutes from Nagano now, so time to rouse the troops, ready the luggage train and check in for some sleep before we head up to the snow tomorrow!