DAY 1: Melbourne to Tokyo

Nihon e Yo-koso. Welcome to Japan!

It’s now mid-morning on Monday and we are already on our first Bullet Train! The countryside is whipping by as we travel at more than 200km/hr on the Hayabusa 19 from Tokyo to Hakodate. Hakodate is a small city on the south end of the Japanese north island of Hokkaido, a distance of 868 kilometres from Tokyo, where we landed late last night.

After welcoming the house-sitters and saying fond farewells to the animals, we drove to Melbourne on Saturday, staying overnight in a motel not far from the long-term carpark I had booked some weeks ago. Dinner at a local pub and election watching on TV was as exciting as our Saturday night got, and when we woke on Sunday morning, we were full of anticipation for the holiday which we have literally been waiting years for.

We had booked a trip to Japan at the beginning of COVID thinking it would all be over in a few months 😉 Last year, when there was speculation Japan might open it borders early in 2023, we used our flight credits from the previous booking and organised our flights from Melbourne to Haneda.

The flight was straight forward enough, leaving about 40 mins late, but arriving right on time into a drizzly and cool evening in Tokyo. I’d have rather been in the pointy end of the plane, but I can say that the service and food was pretty good in the midships section. Qantas has only just reinstated this flight (in fact this was the first one) and all the crew seemed really pleased to be there. Dinner was served not long after we boarded, and Dave and I both chose the slow-cooked beef with Polenta. The Splice ice-cream afterwards was a nice touch! Three movies, a short nap and a light snack filled in the next nine hours until we landed. We had to wait nearly half an hour for a Delta plane to vacate its slot at the terminal. Even with 140 gates at this very large airport, there was not a spare one for our plane! As it turned out, this was the first of many queues we would experience!

We were close to being first off the plane and walked briskly towards our second queue – for checking quarantine documents. I had printed the pre-approvals and also had the related QR codes loaded on my phone, so the check was relatively simple. As we moved away from that area, we could see a lot of people surging towards the immigration signs. The Japanese people might be well organised and polite, but the few thousand people that arrived at Haneda around the same time as us were less so and were rushing to get to the front! As it emanated, the queue for foreign passports started quite a bit further into the large hall, and the ropes to guide the crowds were being adjusted by officious uniformed men, trying to keep everyone in order. I can only guess, but there were around 3000 people in that queue! Fortunately, it did keep moving, but it was still only a few minutes short of two hours later that we got to the front and had our paperwork checked and passports stamped. Well, not exactly stamped, but more of a large postage stamp thing affixed into them.

Queue number four for the night was just after we picked up our bags, this time for Customs checks. Again, a QR scan and passport check and a pleasant smile from a Customs Officer who was far less frazzled than I was at this stage! It was approaching 11pm (1am in Aus) by the time we hit queue number five, this time for a taxi. Chaotic was an understatement, and our decision to hang the expense and take a taxi to the hotel was quickly overturned when we saw the length of the taxi queue, so back into the terminal, a brief search for the train station, two 480-yen tickets bought (for who knows where but they got us through the gate!), then another short queue (number six) to enter the station. A lovely woman helped us find our way to the right platform and yes, you guessed it, we lined up in queue number seven (albeit a short one) for the train into Tokyo.

Our hotel was a short walk from Tararacho station. We chose this location because it was near to the main Tokyo railway station, where we would need to validate out JR Rail passes and catch the Shinkansen north, the next morning.

The room was small by Australian standards, but quite spacious by Japanese standards at 16 m2. It had a firm double bed, a bar-sized fridge, air purifier and separate air-conditioner, pyjamas (!!), tea making facilities, a deep (if short) bath and the obligatory heated-seat, bottom washing toilet! A much-needed shower, a hot cup of tea and into bed around 1:30am (3:30 home time). It’s been a while since I was up that late!