Day Eighteen - Phew!

Today's Blog Post comes to you directly from Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport as we wait five hours for our adjoining flight to Canberra onboard Virgin Australia flight VA654.

Our departure from Haneda International Airport was trouble-free. We had to wait quite a while because we got to the airport early and our flight departed on time. We all managed around two to three hours of sleep which is pretty good when you are flying economy. Our aircraft, a Boeing 787-9, JA893A was only five months old and still had that new-airplane smell.

Our ANA aircraft

The flight back to Sydney was pretty smooth with the odd bit of minor turbulence here and there. We landed at Sydney at 0928h, a full seven minutes ahead of schedule. The Boeing 787 is interesting from a passenger's perspective because it has very large windows, but doesn't have any window shades to pull down if the light outside is too bright. Instead, it uses photo-electric technology allowing you to push a button to dim or brighten the glass. That said, it really makes it difficult to get the white-balance correct when taking photos out of the window.

Departure from Haneda

Banking south of Sydney

On short finals

After we landed, we collected the obligatory duty free alcohol and cleared customs, baggage, and then quarantine. At the baggage collection area, Kyle met up with his friend Jeff, who was returning to Australia from Hong Kong. The process was pretty quick, even though we had some food to declare, they cleared us through, except me who had to wait in line whilst the bio-security sniffer dog gave me and my luggage the once-over.

We then headed over to the domestic check-in counter to put our bags through and to see if we could get an earlier flight from Virgin Australia. However, because of our class of ticket, they weren't even going to bother checking if there were spare seats available on earlier flights. That's what happens when you buy the cheap airfares. Cest-la-vie.

So while we are sitting at the domestic terminal for five-ish hours, what better time to finish this bog off and draw a line under our eighteen day holiday. The fact that we are sitting in an area with great views of the main runway, also presents an opportunity.

We truly have had a great time in Japan, the people are very friendly, though not a great deal of the population speaks English and signage is pretty much the same. This can make things difficult or an adventure depending on perspective. We travelled just a small area of the middle to southern part of Honshu Island, covering Osaka, Hiroshima, Kyoto and Tokyo, but that is such a small taste of what there is to see in Japan. We are all very keen to return to explore some more. I would recommend getting a JR Rail pass that covers a few weeks and just take it as it comes. With such a pass, you can hop on and off the mighty Shinkansen as you please, and you can cover from the northern tip to the southern tip of the Japanese Island chain.

I would also especially like to see Hiroshima again, and to do it right this time, without any incidences. The general consensus was that some of us loved different places. Sky loved Tokyo (especially Akihabara), Jen loved Kyoto, Kyle loved Osaka, Maureen and I were undecided, but really felt that we need to spend more time to discover some of the hidden specialities of the places we visited.

Our flight from Sydney gets us into Canberra at around 1620h. So that it for this holiday (lest something exciting happens between here and home).

Our weary travellers

I hope you enjoyed this little blog.

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