Outward Bound - Finally

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Blog 1 & 2_Japan_2023



March 21 Bright clear morning – Temperature 5°C – Snow still lingering on the ground.

Tokyo – Temperature 15°C – Clear skies



Third time’s the charm – our much cancelled/rebooked/cancelled/rebooked cruise around the Japanese islands is finally underway.



We were picked up by our local limo service Airways Transit precisely at 10:00 am, just like they promised and whisked us to Toronto Pearson Airport, 100 km away, in just under an hour & a quarter. Check-in went smoothly as we did much of the work beforehand online; security was no hassle and we were sitting having lunch in the Signature Lounge by 12:15. On our Air Canada Boeing 787-9 Flight to Narita Airport we were fortunate enough to luck into a seat sale and secured Business Class seats for a price lower than Economy Plus. Business Class seats on this plane are actually sleeper pods allowing us the opportunity to stretch out and snooze. Our flight departed @ 14:30 and after thirteen + hours of relatively smooth flying deposited us in Japan on March 22, where everything slowed to a crawl.



First, let me say that even though we don’t need VISAs to enter Japan, we had to obtain and display QR Codes showing that we had our COVID-19 shots, then it was on to Immigration where more QR Codes were required, and finally to Customs where the last batch of QR Codes had to be presented. To put it bluntly Narita airport at best is a very busy terminal with multiple planes landing in a short period of time resulting in too many passengers flooding the Immigration and Customs areas, which on appearance were never designed to handle the crowds and all this additional checking and rechecking of QR codes. In addition, too much pre-travel passenger verification has been downloaded onto the travellers and if you are not tech savvy or God forbid you don’t even happen to own a cell phone then travel life has become even rougher. So after almost 3 hours after landing we finally exited the exceptionally hot control areas and to our great relief were greeted by the prebooked limo driver holding up our names on a sign board.



After another hour of smooth driving, we arrived at our hotel the Grand Nikko Tokyo Daiba with a room looking out over Tokyo Harbour. Bed was a beautiful thing.

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Comments

[Yvonne Hertzberger]

schedules
It seems that at least they try to stick to the correct times. 3 hours with all those precautions was still less that Pearson without them six years ago, before Covid.