View of Sydney after take-off.
This morning we got up, had some breakfast, finished packing our bags, and headed off to the airport on the train. We got there about 09:30 and went straight in through immigration and security scanning. This took a little while as the airport was a bit busy, but not too bad.
However once we got inside we were surprised at how busy the terminal was. The last few times we’ve flown out of Sydney, it’s been fairly quiet, but today there were crowds of people and it was hard to find a table or seats near any of the dining and shopping areas. We met up with M.’s mother (“T.”) and sister (“K.”), who are travelling with us on this trip. They were having coffee and a snack in a cafe there.
We moved to some seats near one of the departure gates, where I spent several minutes on my phone filling out the Japanese customs and immigration form online. It requires all sorts of things like the address and phone number of the hotel you’re staying at. I tried to do this yesterday at home, but got frustrated by not being able to log in or to reset my password. I got around that by creating a new account – perhaps the old account was deleted since the last time I used it was over a year ago.
We boarded our flight, which was due to leave at midday. However we were still sitting on the ground at 13:00. Initially (around 12:30) the captain said this was due to some “automatic flight navigation” or something system not working, and that they wouldn’t know if it would be working or not until we were in the air! If it did work, our flight time would be 9.5 hours, but if it didn’t come online, the flight time would be 11 hours! I have no idea how this sort of thing could be true, but that’s what he said. But when we still hadn’t departed half an hour later, the captain announced that the extra delay was because of some cargo having to be reshuffled. We didn’t realise it then but this was an ominous portent. We took off over an hour late.
We had a good view of the city as we climbed out of Sydney.
View of Sydney after take-off. |
Whatever that navigation thing was, they managed to get it fixed, because our flight time was just 9 and a bit hours, managing to get us on the ground at Haneda Airport 20:30 local time (22:30 Sydney). We thought the worst was over. Haha.
M. and I only had carry-on bags, but T. and K. had checked luggage. So we waited at the carousel, but there was an odd sign there saying something about some luggage not being there and if your bags didn’t show up, go see the adjacent JAL staff. Sure enough, when the flow of luggage stopped, T. and K. didn’t have theirs.
They talked to a JAL staff member and learnt that their luggage had been unloaded because the plane was too heavy, and was still at Sydney! It will be flown to Tokyo overnight and available for pickup at the airport after 07:30 tomorrow. Or they could have it delivered to our hotel which at first they thought would be best, and spent about half an hour going through details of the hotel and also a bunch of customs declaration stuff, and the staff said the bags might be opened and searched, etc, etc. And then after all this they said that it would take up to 24 hours to deliver the luggage to the hotel! So they decided it would be easier if we just go back to the airport first thing in the morning and get the luggage ourselves.
Fortunately we don’t have a super busy day planned tomorrow, and a late start won’t really disrupt anything.
We finally left Haneda Airport after 22:00, more than an hour and a half after arriving. We got a train from there to Shinagawa and walked the short distance to our hotel. It was really cold! We stopped at the 7-11 near the hotel for the others to buy some toothbrushes and other toiletries, since theirs were in their missing luggage. Then we checked in and prepped for bed.
 View from window of Shinagawa Prince Hotel in Tokyo. |