Sydney to Tokyo via Hong Kong

 The view from my window on day one

He beat me to it

… but he was so adorable standing there with his glasses on his head I just fell a little bit more in love with him. It was an ugly o’clock start for an early flight on what turned out to be a very long day. One good thing about the early flight is Kingsford Smith is quiet. It was easy to move around, smooth proceeding through all the hurdles - no re-pack of shame for us - successful Sydney departure pic all boxes ticked.

Longer flight than I was thinking for some reason i cannot identify, occupied by movies (how did we travel without our own screens & choices?) 

Arrived surprisingly tired, considering all we’d done for nine hours was sit, eat & doze, in Hong Kong 

to change planes via a long long walk from gate 28 down a loooooong corridor, to toss out our water and go through customs and go up a flight of stairs to walk down the exact same corridor on the floor above to gate 27 and our plane to Japan. At least we were all sitting together for this flight.

Sorry about the up-the-nose selfie. Look at MGM he’s looking tired isn’t he. By the end of this flight we all looked way tireder than this. Sleep deprived is not the way to arrive at Haneda because running the QR code gauntlet, along with a few thousand of your closest friends, at a time when all you really wanted to do was lie down a lot …  is a challenge. I’m sure there was a vast $ investment in that system, they are clearly determined to get bang for their buck and slot that sucker in at every possible point. It’s quite excessive.

Our luggage joined us, always a nice surprise, and we journeyed on to our hotel, bid each other a fond farewell with plans to meet at an alarmingly early time in the morning for our first Tokyo day. Oh maaaan lying flat after 18 hours on the move is delightful.