A Bit of a Palaver Getting Home

The day started out quite well.

Lindsey and I got ourselves organised to return home. We had a last Food Hall lunch with Austin, Kaori and Tatsuki. Austin and Kaori returned the hire car.

Then Austin took us to the nearest Shinkansen station so we could make our way back to the airport. 

The dilemma with using the ticket machines in Japanese stations is that they don't accept most foreign bank cards. The queue in the ticket office was quite long. Fortunately, Lindsey had some cash and a nice station worker came to help us buy tickets to the airport, meaning that we wouldn't need to buy extra tickets in Shin Osaka.

We weren't on the super-fast, express Shinkansen. They don't stop at the station we were at. We caught a semi-express and had a good journey to Shin Osaka, where we needed to change trains for the airport.

Alas. Lindsey put her Shinkansen ticket into the ticket gate. But instead of putting the primary ticket in, she put her airport ticket in and the machine swallowed it up. She had to buy another ticket to the airport! Which took for ever, for some strange reason.

No worries, though. We still caught the train out to the airport with a bit of time to spare. We checked in for our flight with no issues. It took no time at all to get through security and immigration. We had plenty of time for a sandwich and a drink, then boarded our flight and took off, bang on time, for Cairns.

Where we arrived 5 or 10 minutes ahead of time - and at exactly the same time as a flight from Tokyo. So few international flights in and out of the Cairns airport. You would think they might stagger them a bit. And they have four, that's FOUR, ePassport readers to cope with what was a vast crowd of people. Four! And then one of them broke down so there were - yes, THREE. It took for ages to get through immigration. (They did fix the broken e-reader so it went back to four, but really, if they want to be a grown up international airport they need more than four passport readers.)

Even then, we would have had more than enough time to get to the domestic terminal. Except that the luggage from the Osaka flight stubbornly refused to come through. There were some bags stuck on the chute, although I'm not sure if they were from our flight. The ground staff in the luggage area were telling the people who maintain the chute and the luggage carousel that there was problem. The background people insisted that it was because the luggage was stuck on the side. It wasn't. Even I could see that it wasn't.

The luggage from the Tokyo flight was collected and the passengers made a long, long queue for the customs inspection.

Finally, the background boys decided that there might possibly actually be a problem with the luggage chute for the Osaka flight and transferred most, but not all of the bags to the same carousel as the Tokyo flight. They had mostly gone anyway.

Eventually, we got our bags, cleared customs (there are some advantages to being older women: the customs officer thanked us for having our paperwork ready, looked at it and waved us through), and legged it as fast as my legs would go to the domestic terminal, where we arrived about 5 minutes after checkin for the flight to Melbourne had closed.

We approached the service desk and explained our dilemma. They were obviously expecting us (and perhaps a dozen other people) and said they could let us board but not our luggage, which would be sent down later in the day and delivered to our homes tomorrow (which is now today). We thanked them profusely, took our boarding passes, made our way through security and then to the boarding gate. (Yes, we will walk with purpose. No, we won't run. Yes, running in an airport terminal is dangerous. Anyway - I am much too old to take up running now.)

We made the flight and were. very pleased to discover that we had, as part of our ticket bundle, a $15 meal voucher. We knew about the one on the international flight but not about the one for the flight to Melbourne. A ham and cheese toastie and an orange juice went down very well indeed.

We made it to Melbourne in good time, perhaps 20 minutes later than scheduled because they had held the flight for the passengers from Osaka. Ian met us and brought us home, via an enormous, independent supermarket in Essendon which provided me with supplies for most of this week. I must got there again, when next I am in the Essendon area. It would be worth a proper investigation.

Were my Pretty Kitty Kats pleased to see me? I think they were. They have been well looked after while I have been away (thank you to all the house sitters and cat feeders) and they haven't had much chance to be lonely. But they greeted me when I came in, not especially effusively, but in a quietly pleased sort of a way. And then Brandy followed me EVERYWHERE for an hour or so and Whiskey watched me from his bed. They did tell me that they hadn't been fed, no not once, since I had left. But I don't believe them.

The luggage has made its way to Melbourne and is now on a truck on its way to Ballarat. The sun is shining. It looks like a nice morning. Back to the normal routines after a fabulous two weeks in Japan. Thank you to Austin, Kaori and Tatsuki for their hospitality.  I do hope it won't be another three years before I get back!!!!!

Dawn, this morning, from my
front porch in Mount Helen