Firstly, apologies for making this entry sooo late! Once we were safely home and I completed a few chores etc., I decided to come down with Influenza A and I struggled to get out of bed for a couple of days. Anyway, am on the mend now and taking things slowly. I suppose that by holidaying, taking planes, trains and ships to visit places, contracting a bug is more likely than if we stayed home and I don’t think we’re ready to do that just yet. Before I go through our last day in Japan and the homeward flight, I wanted to let you know about a medical emergency which occurred as we were returning to our cabin last night. As we were strolling back to our cabin, the Captain came over the speaker to say the “medical emergency response team” was required to go to a cabin on level 5. In fact, the cabin was only a couple of rooms away from our cabin. Within a minute, at least 10 staff, officers and others carrying equipment, including a wheelchair, gurney, a backpack AED, oxygen cylinder etc. swooped past us at great speed. By the time we reached the normal path to our cabin, doors had been closed and we couldn’t reach it. We were all ready to go and sit it out in a lounge area when someone said to try going further on to see if our cabin could be reached another way. We did this and found that we were able to go into our cabin, although the cabin to the left of ours could not be accessed due to a dividing door being locked. Can’t give any updates at to what happened but we didn’t hear anymore about it. Anyway, we made an easy disembarkation, deciding to take care of our own luggage. The whole thing was done very quickly and efficiently. We met our new guide early! He was very impressed and after just checking which of us were going to which airport (one couple Narita, all the rest of us Haneda) we were on the coach and off to our first stop. Yokohama is about 45 km from Tokyo and has plenty of attractions. Our guide explained that it is more “westernised” than other parts of Japan not only being the major port but boasting IT, AI companies. As we arrived early at the magnificent Sankeien Garden, and they had not opened, our guide, who was quite the comedian, spent time extolling the finer points of the Japanese toilet, with its heated seats, sprays, music etc. etc. He gave us tips for surviving an earthquake and many other interesting facts. He also mentioned how “historically accurate” The Last Samuri, movie was. The Sankeien Garden was another area that few tourists visit but plenty of Japanese people do, especially for weddings, photos etc. It was truly a beautiful experience to walk around the many paths in the garden and see the trees starting to change colour for Autumn. There were many old, heritage Japanese style homes and small shrines as well as lakes. We climbed one path to view the harbour and saw Mt Fuji. There was also a three-storey Pagoda in the in the garden. It was extremely quiet and the members of our group were about the only people there. On weekends, it gets busier with the locals visiting. Our next stop on the excursion was “Japanese Style, China Town”. This was an intriguing little place, and we enjoyed wandering the beautifully decorated streets and alleys. I think the “Japanese Style” might have meant the low noise level and orderliness of the area, which is quite different to many China Towns I’ve visited. We stopped here to have a coffee and at one stage saw something rather strange……well it seemed strange. Here we were in Japanese China Town when we saw a man who was quite obviously a Jew, opening his Gold and Jewellery shop, in Japanese, China Town. From this enjoyable stop we headed to a famous building once more back close to the port, called “The Red Brick Warehouse”. This historic building now offers views over the harbour as well as a myriad of local craft shops. We arrived around lunchtime and all things considered; it was reasonably quiet. We managed to find a good place to enjoy lunch before exploring the shops. The restaurants and other eateries are also a popular place for the Japanese to come for lunch, and we noticed a few business meetings being conducted while people were waiting for lunch. Soon it was time for us to be taken to the nearby Haneda airport. We had no issues getting through immigration and checking in, and our flight from Haneda to Hong Kong which left at 4.30pm was smooth and comfortable. In the Hong Kong terminal, we had a short wait before boarding our flight to Sydney. I am proud to say I managed about six hours sleep on this flight so felt pretty good when we arrived in Sydney. In Sydney, we needed to go through customs and immigration as we were re-entering the country. The meant we had to collect our luggage. We had a reasonable window of time to do this before transferring to the domestic terminal to catch our flight to Adelaide, as long as there weren’t any “hiccups”. Our first one was at customs. I declared a wooden spatula and some dried fruit which was not a problem and then the officer asked would I mind helping out by lining up with my luggage, in a 3-person group as they had a dog that was doing “sniffer” training. I really couldn’t say no. Anyway, they placed a bag of “something” on my backpack and then the dog had to walk around all three of us and try to detect the contraband, which it did successfully. Time was ticking away so I asked if I was able to leave now and they said sorry but, no. The bag of contraband was removed and once again the dog was asked to walk around all three of us again for a check. The dog was a gorgeous labrador, so it was difficult to be mad with the situation, anyway it probably burnt up about 20 minutes of our time. Next was an issue at the QANTAS luggage transfer desk. Surprise, surprise, it was not busy at all! This was because the main luggage belt was broken so we had to take our bags to the “oversized” drop-off. We did this and then started to head for the bus to transfer us to the domestic terminal. I know there is a lot happening infrastructure wise at Sydney Airport but a bus taking you across the tarmac to reach the terminal seems archaic for a large airport. We hopped on the bus, and all was going well and we were saying we had plenty of time until a huge QANTAS double deck plane (A380), started to be pushed out onto the tarmac. We were probably held up here for at least 15 minutes as the plane was being pushed out. Anyway, we finally made it to the Domestic terminal and our gate with about 20 minutes to spare. We had a quick and comfortable flight back to Adelaide and arrived home safely around 2.30pm. on Tuesday. Considering Adelaide is an hour and a half ahead of Tokyo time, “jetlag” was not an issue. Well, I thought I was going to finish here when today in our local paper, there was an article and photos about a rare Dusky shark in a manmade inlet, in Bosun, South Korera. I couldn’t believe it! When we were in Busan, our guide kept telling us about this shark and saying how close it was to our ship and that if we had time we should go for a walk and see it, I didn’t write about it because it didn’t seem that important. From the ship you could see hundreds of people on the walkways and pedestrian bridges watching the shark and now it has made our local paper!
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