Land of the rising sun
Once again Elena plans a trip so well in advance and you would expect that if such a trip was planned so far ahead then nothing would possibly go wrong.
But let’s wind back the clock a few months. First there was a change of job for me. This came suddenly and put stress on the situation in our family. I found another job the next day but with change come worry and stress. Then to compound matters I seriously hurt my back two weeks before we were ready to travel.
Three days before heading off I had a tense discussion with my new employer’s wife at work and cleared so much of the tension that was all around me. This was the first sign that balance in my life was starting to show.
I was sore, stressed and concerned for my job more than worrying about what to pack and the customs of yet another country.
Day 1 – A False start
We arranged my brother to look after our son while we traveled Saturday morning arrived; I threw 2 t-shirts, jeans and a pair of track pants into a pack along with underwear socks and the usual toilet bag. That was my packing, done in less than five minutes and weighing only2.5kg. Elena tried to keep her weight down also. Our combined luggage was just over 7kg.
Our flight was from Brisbane to Sydney and then on to Osaka, we asked Stuart (my brother) to drop us at the Brisbane domestic airport terminal. We strolled casually through the glass doors and made our way to the Jet Star check in counters when we were approached by a member of the staff and asked which flight we were on. She almost went into a panic mode – just like us we she advised us that the flight we were on (as it was connecting to an international flight) was departing from the international terminal! There was no time to loose; we needed to run as the checking time was almost upon us. We raced to the first taxi on the rank as threw our bags in explain that we were in a hurry to get to the international terminal. The taxi driver didn’t seem to care too much. He asked if we could wait for a while and he could pick us another paying passenger so the he could make more money. I we furious and told him either he takes us now of moves his taxi to the end of the line and we take the next one. If I waited for only the big sales at my work and told the customers that were buying small items to go away I would not have a job.
We got to the check in running all the way. We were so close to not getting on the flight – Elena’s bag got the “Last Bag” sticker, which means literally that. We were the last people who were getting on the plane. At last we could now relax a little, we decided that with all the rushing we would check through customs and head straight to the boarding lounge and get onto the plane. We could spend time looking through the shop at duty free on the way home.
Elena has this uncanny way of always joining the slowest line of people. The boarding check in had been called and rather that stand in the line we waited until all the families with small children and the masses had boarded. I can never understand these people – they race each other jostling for a position in the line just to get onto a plane where the seats are allocated. There is no prize and believe me the plane won’t go without you once you have checked in – they will even call you name!
So as the queue started thinning and there were but a few people left we stroll up to the officers checking the boarding passes of an Asian family in from of us. The communication between the officers and the family were going nowhere and we once again were the virtually the last one’s on the plane.
At last we were off. Five minutes go by, then ten, then fifteen. When is the plane going to take off? Then we hear the words of the captain. “This is you captain speaking due to a technical problem we are unable to take off and we should be able to advises you of our departure in about 10 minutes”. Great I have no problem with 10 minutes, considering that I almost missed the flight. 20 minutes later we get another message “This is you captain speaking, our technical problem is still being attended to, I will get back to you with a possible departure time shortly”. After 3 hours sitting on the plane we get our final message from the captain. “This is you captain speaking, due to the technical problem on the plane we are cancelling this flight”.
Jet Star offered us a free nights’ accommodation in Brisbane, YAY…I LIVE HERE!!! Why would I want to have a free night here in a hotel! We asked the staff what kind of vouchers we could get for the phone as we were now worried about re-booking hotels in Japan as our date in each city were now all going to be different. The Jet Star staff offered us the huge sum of $5. We called Stuart to come and collect us. We lost a whole day of our holiday. You could say we were not happy and that would be polite.
We rose real early Sunday morning. As I explained to Elena, this flight goes to Sydney so there will be a lot of people trying to get on this flight so let’s be there 3 hours before departure.
After an early rise we were at the opposite end of checking in. Today we would have been the first. The gent at the check in was great as he was one of the staff from the previous day and recognized us. Due to the problems of the previous day he upgraded us to business class on the flights from Brisbane to Sydney.
The flight it’s self was nothing but normal. Except that the little CD player that I rented had an earphone that at full volume you couldn’t hear. I was longing for the flight to be over and finally get to Japan.
We started our decent into Kansai International Airport. Looking out the window and fighting Elena for a few (she always gets the window seat) we saw the night-lights of Osaka. Kansai Airport (look this up on the internet) is one huge man-made island purpose built for international flights. This place is huge! I counted thirty-two planes wing tip to wing tip stretched along the length of the terminal. We exited the plane and onto a little transfer monorail train that took us to the baggage claim area.
We decided that prior to taking the shuttle bus to the hotel that we would book our train tickets here at the airport, as tomorrow we would be leaving from here to go to Tokyo.
The shuttle bus journey was quiet, the time was 8pm and all was dark in Osaka. We drove across the causeway to the city and followed the coast on the freeway. My first impressions of Osaka were that this was an industrial area and by morning I was proved right.
Our hotel was a three star about half an hour’s drive from Kansai and over looked the freeway toward a huge oil refinery. The lobby seemed large and grandeur, however the room was not. By Japanese standards the room was quite large.
There were twenty channels of TV. One in English and that was the CNN News and Elena would not let me tune into the pay TV, as these channels were mostly adult sex channels. In Japan they even give you a program guide for these channels and talk about graphic.
