Beginning my day at 4 am, I finalised packing my bags and made way to the airport. In fear of being late to our agreed boarding time, the speed limit was taken as a suggestion rather than enforced rule. While dad interviewed me like the old days for my birthday since I would be spending it in Japan, I drove to the airport and we very sketchily found a park after navigating the maze that that was the Melbourne airport car park. Entering terminal two we located the Japan airways section and collected my boarding ticket. Having found half and notably not all of our group we mingled for a while discussing our great tiredness and excitement for the weeks to come. Some time passes and Harry, Jason and Linus who had told us they’d be there at 445 still hadn’t shown up. The clock hits 530 and I’m they come, passports ready, tickets collected and JR passes at home. A fatal error that would throw the course of our entire Japan trip. Thankfully Linus’s mum Julia was already on the way with the passes but I was getting worried about the notorious length of customs, so I ushered the group towards our destination, but not before some sentimental parents got some photos of their kids before they left the country

The line moved quickly and we all made it through seemingly without any trouble, apart from my bag which had been sectioned off for about 10 minutes, just for security to hand it back to me without even looking inside…. Having made it through customs we tried to keep the bomb jokes to a minimum as we searched for some form of food. Deciding that hungry jacks would be the cheapest option, ,any of us order that as our preflight breakfast. Boarding the plane, we almost all had isle seats, placing two Japanese women between Linus and I, however before the flight took off a mysterious circumstance saw them changing positions on the plane leaving empty space between us, space which of course left room for harry and Simon to fill during the flight, much to the irritation of the flight attendants.

When we landed it had only just hit me how silly it was to go to a completely new country with language in no way at all derived from Latin without at least trying to learn a lick of the language. Customs was a nightmare of walking and waiting, and a particularly rude fat Canadian man got on my nerves as he yelled at the customs lady trying to help I’m in the nearly silent room. Having given the Japanese government out fingerprints, eventually we all made it through in about an hour and a half and went to get our luggage. Little did we know our journey had just begun. About 15 minutes was spent getting everyone a train pass and when we finally got on said train, I had learned we’d be standing on it for over an hour. With much haste confusion and frustration, with the leadership of Toby and Linus we eventually found our way to the hostel after 3 different train lines and train stations and a 30-40 minute walk with all our gear.
now signing in, I discovered what a hostel is really like, as I’m kept awake writing this blog by the snores of my new room mates. All of us starved we all piece by piece made our way to the local 7-11, and I forced my way through an interaction with a store clerk who spoke not a breath of the English language as my card failed to swipe multiple times. Humiliated and hungry I walked back to the hostel across the road and ate some sushi sort of triangle thingy. It was good.

we then played some pool, of course I won, and some of us went to bed while the rest went for a little walk. I was keen to test out my dad’s camera so I got everyone to do some poses and shots. We made our way back. Toby Harry and I looked at the new star citizen ship and I made my way to bed