Day 2: Flight

Today was relatively uneventful. We got up at 6am to travel to Sydney airport for a 9:15am flight. The first thing we did after checking in our bags was have breakfast. I ordered French toast with pears and mixed berries. It was a really large meal and extremely delicious. Somehow, during the course of ordering, we managed to amass a large number of cutlery though, which made for an amusing pile on the table:

Breakfast Cutlery brought to you by Sydney Airport

The next stop was through customs. Firstly, obligatory photo at the Departures Sign.

There you go Mum!

Then the dash through security. It was all going well till I had my departure ticket knocked from my hand and it slid under the customs officer's desk. So I had to go back and fill out a new one, which delayed me significantly. Then I was stuck behind a rude man in security who filled his tray of stuff whilst it was stacked on the others, causing a massive cue, then got aggro when someone took one when he had his tray finally moved. 

But at least I arrive late the boarding due to getting distracted with shopping (Clare) or have trouble finding my passport to get on board (Josh - again!) and when I was on board I had the lovely surprise of running into a friend of mine from Uni, Tegan, who is on her way to a different cultural exchange program. We caught up after the flight at baggage collection as well, which was lovely.

It took me a little to make it through customs, due to finding the place to actually declare my medications and then the poor customs official had to figure out what they were. But I made it and after an hour and a half drive, we arrived in Tokyo and our hotel.

First impression is that Tokyo is very much like Sydney city, high rises and shopping areas with small eateries around. The cars are very different though. For dinner, we went to a curry house, which meant that unfortunately my first meal in Japan was chips and chicken nuggets, due to dietary requirements. A bit of a disappointment.

My hotel room is very nice though. Small, with a big step into the bathroom (which I jump out of because of height.) It has one of those fancy western toilets, but I am yet to try out the functions on it. My room has free wired internet, but only two pin plugs, so I only have about four hours of battery on my laptop until further notice. If blog posts are few and far between this is why. Hopefully I will have a chance to buy something soon.