Day 0 and 1 Thurs. 1st and Fri 2nd October, Are we there yet? Adelaide, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Tokyo (staying at the Route Inn Grand Hotel Tokyo…..I kid you not!)

We were dropped off at the Adelaide Airport in the late afternoon of Thursday, with plenty of time to spare, thanks to our Uber (Jas).  After checking in, obtaining boarding passes and dropping our luggage off, we were soon catching up with our travelling friends, Rob and Trudy.  All was going well until QANTAS sent us a message to say our plane to Melbourne’s expected departure time had been delayed due to poor weather in Melbourne. At first, we were informed that it was leaving an hour and a half late which would have meant we would have been very likely to miss our connecting flight from Melbourne to Hong Kong. In the end the delay was one hour which was going to be OK as long as we were rushed through, immigration, security etc and into the International terminal. There were about 40 people on the plane who needed to make this connection and QANTAS did an excellent job ensuring we were allowed off the plane first and then having people assisting us to make our way to the Cathy Pacific International gate as quickly as possible. We made the flight and it was only slightly delayed. Later we heard that many flights after ours had been cancelled due to the very bad weather conditions so in hindsight we were pretty lucky.  Our overnight flight to Hong Kong was uneventful and we both managed a reasonable number of hours of sleep. Once we had arrived in Hong Kong, we had a layover of a couple of hours before flying on to Tokyo, this time with JAL. We found a great coffee place and sat and relaxed, it was during this time that Rob W. (our friend) noticed that he didn’t have his wallet. We spent a few minutes frantically searching carry-on bags etc. to locate the wallet but to no avail. Trudy and Rob made phone calls to family to try to get them to help track down the missing wallet as to wherever it may have been left. The options included, Adelaide Airport, Melbourne Airport, QANTAS plane, Cathay Pacific plane or even in his check-in suitcase (best option). Anyway, poor Trudy and Rob were thrown a bit by this but there was not a lot more they could do. I had the strong suspicion that Rob may have had his wallet in his pocket when checking going through security in Melbourne and then had to place it in a tray on its own for security. We were all rushing and as this had happened to Rob on a trip to Norfolk Island, under similar circumstances I thought the same thing may have happened to Rob W. We continued our journey from Hong Kong to Tokyo, a flight which took about 3 and a half hours and arrived at Narita Airport around 4pm. Things were going very smoothly until we reached immigration and passport control. The area was filling very fast and the cues were growing longer and longer. There were 2 banks of different electronic passport scanners for people to use, about 12 in total. They were meant to speed up the process by scanning your passport, fingerprints and take your photo all automatically……unfortunately as we approached more and more of these machines were out of order until none of them were being used. Everyone had to go through the standard immigration and passport control which clearly was taking much longer that usual. We waited for more than an hour to get through. Once through we rushed down to the luggage carousels to claim our luggage. Due to so many passengers being delayed in passport control, many of the suitcases were being taking off the carousels and put in near the carousel so more luggage from other flights could be loaded on. We had to find someone to ask which carousel our suitcases would be on as the flight number had disappeared off the board as it had been so long since the plane had landed. We walked up and down checking all the bags both on and off the carousels but could not find ours. I was heading over to find someone from JAL or lost baggage when I saw another group of suitcases sitting about 200m away from any of the carousels and people starting to write flight numbers on boards to place with these suitcases and there were our suitcases about 500mt away from the carousel they were meant to be on! Anyway relieved, we quickly made our way out through customs to meet the rest of our travelling group and our tour guide. We weren’t the last as the same thing had happened to other people and they too were searching for their bags. About an hour later we were finally on the coach with our guide Henry, heading to our hotel. Our group is quite large (about 34) so far all seem very nice people. After dropping off our gear into our rooms, we met up with Trudy and Rob and went for a short walk to the nearby restaurant strip for dinner. We found a fabulous place that specialised in sashimi seafood and enjoyed this along with sushi and tempura seafood, including octopus, eels and prawns!  (So much raw seafood…..Pat would have been in her element, not.) We returned to the hotel and after having showers etc. fell into a very deep and restful sleep. Oh, and Rob’s wallet wasn’t in his suitcase…..to be continued.