And we’re off! Edinburgh > Tokyo

I still can’t quite believe I’m typing this from our hostel in Tokyo! Although with the level of tiredness and jet-lag we felt when we touched down we may well have been hallucinating the whole thing.

We’ve been here for a couple of days now and already we’ve been exploring nonstop! But more on that later…

Our flights actually went quite well and to any of you who are aware of my previous history with baggage and long haul flights, you will be very pleased to hear that they showed up when we did!! Although I’m still glad I had packed a carry on bag with a supply of clothes and toiletries etc because it’s just not worth tempting fate. I would just like to add here that after our worry about over-packing and trying to travel light, neither of our bags weighed more than 12kg and while that may show just how little I’ve been lifting, I was so shocked and surprised at the check-in I did a little dance – the check-in lady wasn’t too impressed…

Our first flight from Edinburgh to Doha went off well, we had our row of seats to ourselves and we had no sickly drunk people, sickly sick people, or general misbehavers in our immediate vicinity and for that i’m eternally grateful. We were flying with Qatar Airways, the staff were lovely, the seats actually had some legroom for James and to top it all off I discovered that they had the entire Star Wars saga available to view! The flight went pretty quickly after that..

We had a layover in Doha for about 6hours, and that about maxes out the most amount of time I would like to spend in an airport at any one time. James and I managed to entertain ourselves for most of it though, it’s excellent having a companion to travel with, to keep you company and help share the load (often physically because I haven’t been lifting recently, bro …sorry James) Highlights included the large Lamp-Bear installation by artist Urs Fischer in the main foyer – it definitely helped with way finding “oh that’s back by Lamp-Bear” “Yeh I’ll meet you at Lamp-Bear”

Finding multiple aisles of 2kg bags on milk powder in Duty Free- and then at every kiosk and shop thereafter. Am I missing something here? Is there a reason no one has told me as to why one would need 2.25kg of milk powder in an airport? Or if people are buying it in such vast quantities that they require the tax off of it?

Finally our flight to Tokyo had come and we were off on our last 10hour flight before the destination! Our second flight was much like the first, although it was slightly busier everyone was pretty keen to get some shut eye – apart from a flight attendant who woke me up to feed me and I’m not sure whether I forgive her or not..

Our last leg of the journey took us from the airport to our hostel and it may well have been the most eventful part, both utterly exhausted and slightly delirious we had to get to our hostel before the check-in deadline and with our flight already scheduled to arrive late at night and it taking well over half an hour to get through customs and immigration queues we were left to run for it! Except we didn’t know where to run to or when to run and in my case was unable to run because….I haven’t been lifting.. Cue us asking anyone behind a desk for help, and then getting it and making it to our hostel with no bother. Our sleep addled memories have definitely played it up as more Mission Impossible than the more realistic but still desperate dash across Tokyo managing to catch the last subway services of the night.

Having managed to arrive on time we both got our heads down in our wee capsules for whatever little shuteye our jetlag would allow and refueled for our first full day in Tokyo!

Hatti x