Waking up seeing the wheels of an A380 coming at you is a little disconcerting, to say the least.
A short walk to the train, a rattly ride to Terminal 5, and being asked to partly disrobe is all par for the course with air travel these days. But since I last flew, there have been some upgrades and some plotting that should hopefully make life a little more comfortable.
I’m returning to Japan, and this time I booked a refundable ticket for a small extra cost because I have access to standby tickets. This means that, providing you are flexible on travel dates, times, and seats, you can get on planes for really cheap. This should hopefully save me a bunch on the airfare and possibly get me an upgraded seat too!
But not only that, I’ve recently started using an Avios credit card to collect points, and one of the perks is free airport lounge access. After finding my way through thousands of people walking around with their mouths open looking at the ceiling, and holding my breath through the duty-free perfume fog, I found the lounge and was nicely surprised. I basically just wanted somewhere to sit down so I could do a bit of work, but they included a full buffet breakfast—as much as you wanted! Now, it wasn’t the highest quality, but for free, it was decadent. A couple of hours working, with tea, croissants, and a small fry-up. Perfect way to start the trip.
Then, a walk and a shuttle train to the departure gate, and I was on the flight—but what seat did I get? 25G is a low number, so I wasn’t at the back. I was travelling business class, baby! Metal cutlery—don’t mind if I do. Glass glasses and complimentary cokes—fill me up! And the legroom! Oh my god, I cannot tell you (apart from all my other blog posts complaining about it) how much I appreciate legroom on flights. I would have sucked up cattle class for a cheap ticket and been happy, but this is winning the lottery.
14 hours later, and the LED mood lighting in the ceiling created a faux sunrise for those who managed to sleep. Getting on a plane at 10am and trying to immediately fall asleep was never going to happen for me. I’m feeling a bit tired as I disembark, but I’m here and I’ve a whole city to explore.
I got myself a Suica card and hopped on a monorail into town. It’s quick and leans over in corners an alarming amount, but after four or so stops I jump off and try to find some Wi-Fi at a Holiday Inn. The eSIM I bought did not work, but thinking it was probably a setting, I went through their chatbot help, and then a human tried to help. After an hour, even the human gave up and said sorry—do you want a refund? Yes, I bloody do. So I’m still without internet, which is frustrating, but I had coffee and a snack and now I’m off to find a park to walk around.
On our honeymoon we came to Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, so I knew it would be a nice place to spend some time. I dropped the bags off at a locker because just two trains in I was already hot and bored of carrying them around, and all I needed was my wallet, passport, and phone. I won’t go into detail about the park—it was lovely as ever, an oasis in the middle of a city. But I was here to see if there was any cherry blossom about. It’s something we were a little worried about missing, coming later in April, but we needn’t have worried. It looked spectacular, and lots of people were picnicking on blankets under the pink blooms and taking photos.
I was tired, having been awake for 20 hours by this point, so I just sat in the sun and nearly nodded off. From here, I had spent enough time people-watching and ice cream eating that the hotel check-in was open, so I made my way there and did fall asleep on the train, literally only waking up because the train stopped abruptly at my stop. Bleary-eyed, I fell out of the train in a raggedy mess and made my way to the hostel.
