Good bye Hong Kong, Hello Japan!

---

I’m not quite sure where my visit to Hong Kong ends and the trip to Tokyo begins, once you’ve gone through customs you’re in that ambiguous zone that I’ve never quite been bothered to try and understand, technically on Hong Kong territory but according to your passport you’ve left the country.



I’m not sure where I’d stand if the baby who was so adamant on trying to eat my passport and boarding pass on the way to the gate had actually succeeded and I did for a split second contemplate flushing my passport down the toilet in an attempt not to have to go on the plane thankfully, my sensible side overcame my inner wimp.



It occurred to me that I’ve never before travelled to the airport alone so it was slightly strange not to have the whole saying goodbye saga it was just a case of <span> checking in and then taking my little old self through security which was quite depressing to have no one to complain to about the whole ordeal (ok, I know it really isn’t and I just need to man up a bit.)



Airports are strange places, they’re such a melting pot of different nationalities and cultures; I must have spoken (I lose the term very loosely) five languages within an hour – I asked a French man to keep an eye on my suitcase, spoke English at the check in desk, said excuse me in Japanese to try and ask a woman to keep an eye on my laptop when I went to the loo and said sorry in chinese for walking straight into someone.



Other than a few short naps (I didn’t really want to sleep properly through fear of missing my flight), I spent my time in the airport wandering around the shops, arguing with the woman on the till at Macdonalds’ as to why I couldn’t redeem my free coffee coupon there and then buying and drinking a Mcdonalds’ coffee and then buying a Shaun the Sheep purse that I’d already seen at Tsim Sha Tsui (don’t laugh I have an attachment to black sheep after being allowed to name one when it was born out of season on a farm we were staying on when I was about four years old- naturally I called it Abi.)



I was quite happy (well as happy as I can be in an airport) that I was flying from gate 22 (my lucky number) as it almost made up for the fact that I had managed to misplace my lucky flying bracelet somewhere and was therefore (as per usual) convinced that we were going to fall out the sky (touch wood that won’t happen as I’m writing this to pass some time on the plane.)



At the gate, I was truly back in Japanese territory and was having to readjust to being stared at for my freckly skin and fat frame (well everything’s comparative) I wanted to stand up and shout “yes, I am on the right flight!" When our flight was announced we all squashed onto a small bus to take us to the aircraft and it made me feel really small in comparison to the hundreds of huge, powerful planes around us.



Unfortunately, when we got to the steps it appeared that our plane was not one of those huge, powerful planes but instead a baked bean can with wings, I tell a lie, maybe it was two baked bean cans! At least it was slightly bigger than the eight seater white knuckle trip we had to the Isles of Scily but that was for twenty minutes, this was going to be for five hours.



Up until this point I had almost forgotten the Japanese obsession with taking photos – they’re almost worse than Miss Wu (one of our school teachers who insisting on interrupting lessons to dictate exactly which kids she wanted to take photos of.) I kid you not, we had to wait ages to go up the stairs because it seemed like every family / couple / person of Japanese origin felt the need to pose in front of and<span> / or on the steps to the plane for a photo- I don’t quite understand this necessity, surely they’re not going to look back at all their holiday snaps and think, “hang on a minute, but how did we get home?” I swear one guy was filming the whole walk up the stairs and when I walked past him to get to my seat (by the wing again of course) I saw that he was filming his headrest…



I sat down and got myself as settled as I can be on a plane (i.e grabbing the armrests, wiping my sweaty hands and hyperventilating) and prayed for it to be other soon. If you thought I make harsh comments, what the pilot announced next was harsh even by my standards: “welcome on board this flight to Tokyo Narita airport, please make yourselves comfortable as we wait for our last few passengers to board, you can thank them that we’re not in the air already, they obviously had something much more important to be doing.” Ten minutes later four Japanese girls walked down the aisle clutching Mcdonalds’ bags as everyone else glared at them.



The pilot also did the usual spiel of telling us how long the flight was going to be “four hours twenty minutes” and failed to make anyone laugh by saying “in winter the journey is shorter as we have a tail wind but as you may have noticed, it’s summer therefore we’ll have a headwind.” I’m not sure if this guy's funny or just a patronising idiot! I also wasn’t a massive fan of him telling us that our cruising altitude would be slightly lower than usual due to the plane being “unusually heavy” and then added “but you’ve picked a beautiful day to fly” – trust me, there is never a beautiful day to fly!

---