Tokyo part 1

Those of you who have eagle eyes will no doubt have noticed that my last blog, “here we go again” was actually posted after I arrived in Tokyo.

Well to be honest, I just clean forgot to press the ‘publish” button.

Whether this was down to old age, red wine or the excitement that comes from starting a new trip will never be known. Anyway my dear followers you are all caught up now and I will start my journey to the land of the rising sun.

Tuesday May 2nd.

The alarm gives me a rude awakening at 5AM. Since taking early retirement 5 years ago, this an event that rarely happens and take a few moments to realise what is going on!

Excitedly I gently crawl out of bed, kettle on and head for the shower. Whilst waking myself under the stream of hot soapy water my brain is working overtime.

Did I pack everything?

Have I got all the tickets for all of us? As you will recall my friends Gary and Diane are coming along on this trip.

Is my phone charged up? And my tablet?

Have I got my passport?

Did I finish uploading the forms on the “japan travel app”

Well that last point is a bit of a sore point. The app is designed to give you fast track entry into Japan. You create an an account online, entering your basic details and passport number etc, then

upload photos of your covid jabs QR codes and these are then verified as OK by Japanese authorities and an hour or 2 later you get confirmation this has been done and a QR code appears on the app for you to scan at immigration in Tokyo. Japan was still in lock down until only a couple of months ago and restrictions are only recently being relaxed.

Anyway this process sounds simple but did take quite some time to complete.

Next you fill in details of your visit, dates, name and address of hotel you are staying at, including phone number and post code, when this is completed, hey presto, another QR code appears on the app and saves you having to fill out the immigration and landing card on the plane, and of course that sight of 360 passengers all trying to borrow the same pen!

Finally there is the customs declaration form. Are you importing drugs or guns or any type of plant or seeds or animal products? So better finish that ham baguette before getting off the plane! When completed, “ping” a third QR code appears and you are done with it all.

Just a few days later I read the news announcement, “All Covid restrictions now lifted, your Covid QR code will magically disappear from the app on May 1st. Grrrr! All that time we spent on it!

Anyway, more about this later as you will see.

7AM on the dot Gary and Diane turn up and we are off to Heathrow. After many months of planning and talking we are finally on our way.

Our flight was with Cathay Pacific on a Boeing 777 Dreamliner and off we flew at 12.20, exactly on time. A glass of wine was sipped before lunch and we all drank a toast to a happy holiday.

Very nice it was too, washed down with another glass of red, well I am on holiday.

So we are are 2 hours into this 12 hour first leg to Hong Kong. So watch a film, plenty of choice on the inflight system. OK, only another 9 hours to go. Play some video games, try to sleep, can’t sleep have a glass of orange juice, only 8 hours to go! Twiddle thumbs, look at the map, blimey we are only just passing Turkey. So off go the cabin lights and try and rest, hour after hour go by and finally lights on and only 3 hours to go. I take another look at the map and notice we have flown over many places I visited previously, Taraz and Almaty in Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China.

The cabin crew spurt into action and after breakfast we finally descend into Hong Kong for a 3 hour layover.

Our new aircraft then speeds us to Tokyo. After an hour or so immigration cards and customs forms are handed out and we smugly decline as we have done ours weeks earlier. So we look on as only 357 people try and borrow one guys pen! Mutterings around the cabin, ” what’s the postcode of our hotel? What’s their phone number?, etc.

Off the plane we go and into the terminal we head. At the baggage carousel 2 airport staff had taken all the bags off the conveyor and lined them up for us to easily find, very helpful.

I turned to the others and said, OK, we will need to open the app and get our QR codes ready now.

Diane opened the app and said, “OK, got them open”

Gary’s jaw dropped as he uttered, ” WHAT!? not sure if I got mine, I thought they weren’t needed any more”

No, Gary only the Covid one not needed!

After a few frantic minutes of trying to remember passwords etc he did find them and forward we went.

So, off to passport control. I have never seen anything ike it, every 10 metres , airport staff bowed and directed us onwards, all smartly dressed and smiling, their white gloved hand showing us the way. Reaching passport control we were greeted with a “hello” please go to gate 7, the passport official smiled and greeted us with a polite nod, checked documents, took our fingerprints and photo, scanned our QR code wished us a good trip and within 2 minutes we were through,

Plenty more smiling faces guided us to customs gates, again scanned our QR code and passport and were in!

We all remarked that we had never had such an easy and pleasant experience at any other border control.

Well done Japan for giving your visitors such a warm welcome,

I Collected our train passes and made seat reservations for the Narita Express to Tokyo. Only an 8 minute wait for the train which was exactly on time and taking our seats I smiled with relief as we were finally in Japan and way to our hotel for 6 nights in Tokyo.