Day 1 and 2 of the family adventure
Well we made it to Japan, albeit adventure packed.
The flight to Hong Kong went well at first but then the pilot made an announcement that we would be landing in Cairns due to a “technical error”.
I could tell they thought it was serious, as you could here the pilot breathing in air via a mask that made him sound like Darth Vader when he breathed in.
We ended up in Cairns for 2 hours in transit, and found out that one of the systems in the control panels was shorting causing fumes to enter the cockpit.
They fixed it and we were on our way.
All of this meant that we didn’t get to the hotel in Hong Kong until after 11:30pm, and that made us too late for going to The Peak.
To make it all the more interesting Marek informed us as we were checking in at the hotel that he didn’t have his napsack on him, he had left it in the bus from the airport, even though he was told to get it as we were leaving. My fault I guess for not double-checking.
We had the concierge chase down the tour bus driver and the driver said it wasn’t there, so we left our contact details in the vain hope it’d turn up before we went to the airport.
But alas we weren’t so lucky.
As I’m on the top level for frequent flyers we have been able to gain access to all of the business class lounges in Brisbane and Hong Kong, so we had breakfast in the lounge at Hong Kong before we flew to Tokyo.
We flew in low enough on the way in to see a wide expanse of Japan as we came into land and see some of the rural areas along the coast.
Immigration took over an hour of queuing before we were able to get to the train station to catch the train to Nippori. it was a very nice ride from Narita airport to Nippori and we got in just after dusk. After finding our way out of the station we walked down to the Ryokan, on the way is a pedestrian mall with shops and food outlets, Yanaka Ginza is it’s name.
It’s very cute and a nice introduction to Japan for us, we found a Bento box and curry/noodle shop at the end of the mall, that we have eaten at both nights now, food is great.
Well the first day had was set aside for going into a main JR station to validate the 14 day rail passes for the rest of our time, we had to catch the Keisei Sykliner (electric express train) on the first day when we landed as we are in Japan for 15 days, and JR Narita Express would of been 3 times as much. After a nice morning walk to Ueno station we booked Shinkansen (bullet train) tickets to the snow, and to Kyoto, and bought Disneyland/sea 2 day passes as well. We also sussed out how to get to Mt Fuji, but as it’s winter we can’t go up, but we will have some great views from ground level they tell us, I’ll let you know in a later post/email.
As Marek lost his napsack, Vic was very keen to find a replacement thermal t-shirt for him, as he really feels the cold.
It took ages and lots of walking around the shopping centres near Tokyo station to find one, and as it turns out the shopping centre we found it in was very good, it has a huge range of stuff that Vic liked 
All in all we spent around 8+ hours wandering around Nippori, Ueno and Tokyo stations and the environs, but we did manage to get some photos of the imperial palace from the outside before the police moved everyone along at 4pm when area near the gates to the palace is cleared every day, I’ll post the photos soon I hope to my Gallery site via http://www.mvbmb.com
Oyasumi Nasai/Good Night,
Mark, Vic, Beth, Marek and Brittany