Day 1 – Planes, trains and automobiles

You know in movies, when the characters are always late for their flight and you see them running in the terminal calling “hold that plane”? I always comment on that… “so unrealistic”, “that never happens”, “stupid people should be more organised”. Well today, sad to say, we were those characters.

Automobile

We caught a taxi to the airport at 4.30am. Bloody Australian taxi fares… that’s a rant for another day.

Plane

AirAsia flight to Kuala Lumpur. We had a fairly tight connection  to our ANA Tokyo flight, so it was important that the AirAsia flight was on time. It was. Phew. We landed in KL (KLIA2) on time, which left us 1 hour 50 mins to go through immigration, collect our bags and transfer to KLIA to check into our Tokyo flight. Piece of cake.

Automobile

The AirAsia pilot parked the plane at the furthest bay at KLIA2, that gave us about a 30 minute walk to Immigration. There was a fairly big queue at Immigration, but we got through with over one hour left.  Our bags didn’t take too long to appear. We set about trying to find the shuttle bus to KLIA. That proved to be tricky. The signs, or lack thereof, were confusing. It took too long to find the bus stop and even then, which bus to catch. When the bus came we asked the driver if its that right bus., he said yes, but we should catch the other bus because that will be quicker. We caught that other bus which cost us 2 Ringgit each. Sitting on the bus with 45 minutes before our flight, we we’re starting to get nervous (actually Jane had been nervous for 30 minutes already!). We got to KLIA with about 30 minutes to take off, only to find the ANA check-in was closed. Shit!

Plane

There were some ANA staff at the check-in counter, so we pleaded with them to check us in. They did, but they had to open up the system again. They said our bags can go in the “oversize” area, but they weren’t guaranteeing they would make it on the flight. One of the ANA staff then escorted us to the gate. When we saw the long queue in immigration our hearts sank. We’re not going to make it. But our friendly ANA staff member escorted us through the VIP area – excellent!

Train

Then we had to catch the train to the other terminal – typical! She said when we get off the train we need to run to gate before it closes. Then we transformed into those movie characters. Jane and I felt like Jennifer Anniston and George Clooney, but in reality we probably looked more like Melissa McCarthy and Chevy Chase!

Plane

We made it! Big thank you to the ANA staff. It would have been easy for them to say “check is closed – too bad – so sad”. But they went the extra mile and ensure when made the flight. We can’t thank them enough.

The rest of the flight was a joy. We were in business class after all.

We ate the Japanese menu and it was all very delicious. We even had sake. Business class was full of business men (Jane was the sole female), and we were the only tourists. Mami Fukui, The flight attendant looking after us took an interest in our plans and actually offered to meet us after in Tokyo. We got her Facebook details, but couldn’t find a suitable day to meet. Perhaps she was just being ultra polite.

We arrived in Haneda, Tokyo early at 9.30 pm.

After going through immigration, we had our fingers crossed our bags had come with us. With great relief they were already on the carousel waiting for pick up – phew!

Train

Now began the interesting job of navigating Tokyo’s railway system to get to Shinjuku, the closest station to our AirBnB unit. I already had some instructions so it wasn’t too hard. We had to change trains at Shinagawa.

We arrived at Shinjuku and quickly realised why it had a reputation of the busiest train station in the world – there were people everywhere. They say the 3.7 million people travel though the station every day! I think we met all of them and they all seemed to be going in the opposite direction to us. We were lugging two big suitcases, my camera bag, Janes laptop bag and her handbag. It was tough going. I used google maps to navigate to the unit. It seemed to take forever.

We arrived at the apartment about 12 midnight.

We were exhausted! We were ready for bed. I switch on the light… what I thought was a light switch was in fact a fire alarm – which duly sounded. Eeek how do I turn it off? Apparently the switch is a timer that’s supposed to shut itself off after a while – our was stuck on. Strangely no one else came out of their apartment to see what all the fuss was about – also the fire brigade didn’t come. Lucky it wasn’t a real fire. Anyway the building supervisor came and sorted it out. Through his limited English I got “don’t do that again!”

What a day!