Tom hits Japan

Well, we're finally here. The journey went fairly well considering. The flight from Birmingham to Amsterdam was fairly empty, and Tom laughed his way through it, charming a large group of lads on a stag weekend in the process. We had a couple of hours to kill at Schiphol, but managed to stumble across a baby lounge, complete with very comfy-looking cots, soothing music and night lights. A great find and Tom had a really good kip for an hour. We were hoping the Osaka flight would be similarly empty, but no such luck. Completely full. We did manage to get bulkhead seats, however, and Tom just fitted in the bassinet that KLM provided. He refused to sleep until the cabin lights went off though; just too many things going on for a nosey boy to relax. He got about 4 hours sleep in the end, which was about 4 hours more than Nik & I managed, thanks to Takumi, the 10-month old boy sitting next to us, who held out for over 8 hours (of the 10.5 hour flight) before shutting up and nodding off. Still, all in all, it was a good flight and the KLM cabin crew were excellent as usual.

Tom did us a favour at customs, though. The official was about to ask us to open up our bags for an inspection, but then noticed Tom gurning at him from the rucksack and waved us through. We then took the airport express up to Shin-Osaka (with a very odd Norwegian man), the local train to Rokkomichi and finally the bus up the hill to Hiromi's flat, arriving at about 4.00pm.

Hiromi prepared us a wonderful meal of pork shabu-shabu and a range of side dishes, which hit the spot in a huge way. Exactly what we needed after so much in-flight food. Nik & I were really flagging by this point, and were in bed by 8:45. As is often the way, though, I was wide awake again at 10:25pm, shortly followed by Tom, who screamed the place down until 1.00am, until a combination of hugs & drugs finally sent him off. A bad night though. We didn't get much shut-eye at all.