flight to australia – we come to the land down under (part 1)

so, first of all, i have arrived to australia, safely, soundly, with some issues along the way, but nothing major.

it is amazing how little i have done in terms of physical movement in the past 36 hours, and yet how many things i want to write about and how exhausted i am!

so, in chronological order.

departure from toronto

departing toronto was early, cold, and fast. at the airport gate we had to go straight through to security & customs right after checking in, which imho was total b/s, as this essentially limited goodbye to a few hugs (and kisses) and a wave as you walked in. short goodbyes are good, but come on – checking in early and having breakfast/coffee at the airport was such a nice plan. oleg checked in uneventfully, while i had to repack my extra huge 72 pounds suitcase to be 70 pounds – thankfully, my bags are packed loosely, so i just moved my climbing shoes (2.4lbs) to the duffel bag, and we were off to see the wizard of US customs.

US customs were easy and fast – where are you going? – sydney – blah, you’re boring. security asked us both to take out cameras and swabbed them for explosives.

we came about 40-50 minutes early for the flight, so oleg chilled at the waiting rows (he said he enjoys it – i was too overwhelmed with thoughts to sit still), while i went and bought myself some spoilage – i.e. 2 journals, time and wired. after a quick 12 minute phonecall to tim to see how he’s doing, some snapshots of our plane, i kinda shut down at the waiting rows until we started boarding at sunrise.

flight to chicago i cannot remember almost at all. it was about 1.5 hours long.

chicago airport

upon arrival to chicago, much waiting and walking was done. we changed terminals with their nifty monorail, then had to stand in a line up for JAL counter to get boarding passes (even though we theoretically shouldn’t have needed to do so as we had boarding passes from the woman in toronto. they are all so confused), then insane US security check – shoes off, bags open, etc etc, no camera swab this time, then heading over to the gate where we saw our huge insane Japan Airlines 747 plane. after much much wait, we at row 65 being 2 rows away from last one were boarded and ready to go for the 13 hour flight to tokyo.

flight to tokyo

this by far was the most physically and emotionally trying leg of the trip. first of all, there are only so many things you can do. the economy class in JAL is awesome cause you get your own tv screen and controller, but all the movies you can watch only so many times over. i saw mr and mrs smith another 2 times i think. and rewatched magadascar’s good parts. and saw some other movies. and read my journals, twice. killed the battery on my laptop (if they only gave me an outlet i’d be in heaven). and played out all their cheesy games (tetris, etc). and took photos of the things we were flying over (see alaska photos here). and missed tim. over and over again. and after i did all that there were still 5 hours to spend in the air.
i was really good and didn’t pass out almost at all – maybe a few times, like 3, when my brain would just shut down in the middle of a thought. but all in all, i kept myself up, so that i could fall asleep on sydney’s night time and wake up on sydney morning.
if there was one thing i would do differently, is that i’d buy a sudoku book (my palm is for some reason totally dead – unfortunately i couldn’t get it to work before i left – that’d be another thing i’d change i support), and i’d bring a nice thick book i want to read. there’s enough time for eeeeeeeeverything you want to do, and then some.

arrival to tokyo was welcome and extremely anxiously anticipated.

tokyo

i’ll switch to point form notes because that’s what i feel like doing here.

JAL switch from one of their flights to another involves staying in a 100 person line up that goes to security (when all you’ve done was just get off the airplane that came from a 13 hour flight) and then standing in another 130 person line to a mosh-pit infront of the counter and disappears in 50 minutes. if we knew that we’d go and relax first instead of wasting time and nerves standing in the stupid line.

a distinctly japanese trend – a lot of couples wear tshirts/sweatshirts with the exact same design on them. imagine a scarfy like theme (paint splatters, weird funky fonts, cool clipart), but on both couples. identical. we’ve counted at least 10, probably more.

tokyo had showers (see photos) that positively are now stand as one of most remarkable events of my life. after being treated like total cattle in the flight (in terms of food and such, you know, group herding), in the line ups, and in the transfers, for mere $5 you get a clean personal 2 room shower with amazingly complex toilet, 3 fresh towels, a bunch of supplies, and awesome water in terms of temperature and pressure. i came out feeling like i’m a human being again.

i have some japanese coins with holes in them now.

i can also tell the difference between mandarin and japanese by ear. i know its not remarkable, but its especially cool when you can tell different words in mandarin.

mandarin, japanese and korean writings are remarkably different and can be recognized in an instant

spending 3 hours walking around the airport and getting free internet – not wireless, which is paid, but internet from yahoo’s kiosk desktop – while japanese pleasant voices announce stuff on the background all the time, is extremely nice.

they totally rip you off for coffee and beer. coffee was $3US, beer was $6US for small.

upon boarding the tokyo plane to sydney i fell asleep before we even pulled away from the gate, and slept soundly for 6 hours until breakfast was served.

i shall depart to sleep right now (it is 9:30pm sydney time, 5:30am toronto, and i have successfully stayed up until now). the story, picking up in sydney and commenting on my today, shall continue tomorrow morning, with photographs of me at the ocean, and more!