Japan here we come

On the way!

So after a bad night's sleep (why do you always have a bad night's sleep before going on holiday?) we headed to Manchester airport.  We were ridiculously early, but found complete and utter chaos at the check-in.  Obviously there had either been some severe staff shortages or another severe f**k up as the queue for the check-in was enormous.  People stuck in the queue were in an earlier flight - so they then all got moved to the front, meaning that the queue then didn't move for about 40 minutes.  By the time we had checked in, we only had enough time to grab a bun for breakfast from Starbucks and head to the gate when we were hoping for a more relaxed time!

Huge ebi in Nagoya

However, we did get our flight.  It was late leaving, but it made up time on the way over.  To be honest it was lovely to leave the UK - don't think I've ever been so happy to get away from the place.  We got to Frankfurt to discover our onward connection was at the far end of the airport, so we had a bus journey and then a very very long walk to get to the gate.  It was only 15 minutes from arrival to boarding.  The long haul flight was fine, my wonderful husband had bought us Premium Economy seats and I'm so glad he did.  We were in the bulk head aisle - which meant that we could completely stretch out our legs and we had a huge shelf on which to dump all our stuff.  Fantastic.  The food was also better than expected - better than I've had in a long time on a flight.

All three of us tried to get some sleep.  I managed about 10 minutes, as did Matt, but Tom got a good 4 hours.  The rest of the time was spent watching films / TV / listening to music etc.  Why oh why can't I sleep on flights?  I get so annoyed when I look round, it always seems that everyone on the flight is asleep except me.

Even Soffie needed caffeine

We were a little bit late arriving into Nagoya, and as we had to go through immigration and collect our baggage here, we ended up missing our connection to Fukuoka.  Not a problem thought, it meant that we got dinner vouchers for 3,000 Yen, so went to find lunch, which had to be large ebi of course.  We then got the next flight to Fukuoka.  By the time we had arrived, picked up our luggage again, got the subway to Hakata and found the apartment it was 3pm so we could check in.

We were absolutely trashed by the time we got to the apartment.  It is a shoebox, but that's what I was expecting.  We had to unpack immediately otherwise we wouldn't have been able to move around the place.  Think it is safe to say we won't be cooking here.  Although there is a kitchen, there don't seem to be any plates to eat off!  In fact, I'm not sure the person who rents this place out has thought about how to live here:  we have a washing machine, but no airer - so how do we dry anything?  We ended up having to go to a 100 Yen shop to pick up all the bits and pieces she hasn't included.

Hakata Ramen

We all had showers, changed into clean clothes and then went for an explore of the area.  We found the big Yodobashi Camera - which is a mega store full of electronics, has a 100 Yen store, big toy shop, restaurants etc etc.  We then went to Hakata Station and wondered around to try to get a feel for the place.  We ended up in a Ramen shop for tea.  By this time Tom was looking quite pale, so we decided to go home.  He went straight to bed.  Matt and I then tried to stay up until 9pm, it was a massive struggle but we got there eventually and then tipped ourselves happily into bed.