Flight and Day 1

All packed

So it's not every day you fly to Japan. I woke up at 7:15 on the 2nd - 15 minutes before my alarm went off, an amazing feat for me. A feat that was only surpassed when, when my alarm DID go off at 7:30, according to Rachel I'd fallen asleep and managed to turn it off without realising. We didn't actually start getting up until around 8ish, which turned out to be for the best, as once we started driving, there was no traffic all the way to Heathrow. I'd been expecting tailbacks and 2 hour delays so that by the time we arrived I'd have to go right away, but nope, London traffic was nonexistant.

They look pleased

A wonderful photo of Rachel in the Café...

We parked at the airport fine, and then wandered into Terminal 3a where, because we had already checked in online, bag drop took about 5 minutes and there was no queue. Unlike Stanstead where you have to rush to bag drop and hope you end up somewhere near the front of the queue otherwise you're going to be in a line for at least an hour. Then we went and sat in Pret à Manger and had a drink and some Carrot cake, trying to kill time before my plane arrived. Eventually we decided I should probably just go through so I had enough time to get through security. After a teary goodbye from Rachel (which she's probably glad I don't have a photo of) I made my way through security and waited to find out which gate I should go to. I didn't have to wait long, as the gate number popped up on the screen about 10 minutes after I got into duty free.

My flight's on there, I promise

The gate was a decent walk away but when I arrived I immediately spied people I knew. Tim and Sian were sat next to Liam in the lounge area waiting to be called to board. Because my seat was right at the back of the plane. I got to go on in the second group. The flight was 80 people short, and so there were two empty seats next to me, which on its own was good, but the only other person on my row left and moved somewhere else. So I was able to switch seats and have the entire row to myself.

After an exceptionally lengthy inflight advertising and safety announcement, we took off. I decided, once I flicked through the in flight entertainment magazine, to watch as many films as I could before we arrived, and so proceeded to watch Brave, Chronicle, Dark Shadows, Men in Black III and Prometheus. I have to say I think Chronicle was the best of all of them, but I wasn't a big fan of any of them...

Breakfast looks... interesting.

We arrived in Narita 10 minutes early, but given the taxi time to the terminal, that extra time was lost pretty quickly. We then had to make it through immigration which took quite a while. We queued with everyone else before finding out when we got to the front of the queue that we needed to be in the diplomat queue because we were needing resident cards. This involved another long queue followed by me finding out that they couldn't process my passport or possibly my visa. It was a little scary as everyone else that I knew had all left and gone through, and there was nobody else going through immigration at all. It took them about half an hour but eventually they sorted it out and gave me my card, then I collected my baggage which had been kindly looked after by Liam and Michael, and we wandered into the main airport.

After wandering around a little, we found where we were meant to be, and we met Kelsie and Asya in the meeting point room. By this point it was only about 11:30, and we weren't getting picked up until 3pm so we wandered around, bought some food and drinks and waited to see some people from the university. Fortunately for us the Meiji group arrived about half an hour early, so we got told they had another 7 people to pick up, but they had 2 coaches, so we could leave now and then the rest would follow later when they arrived.

Beautiful weather!

I fell asleep on the coach, so I'm not sure how long it took us to get into central Tokyo, but when I woke up we had arrived at the dorm. We collected our bags and went inside. We'd been given sheets that told us which room we were in. The dorm itself is like a hotel, in the sense that there aren't individual flats, but there are 3 floors (including the ground floor) with a number of rooms on each floor, and a bathroom at the end. I haven't had a chance to look around everything yet but I have taken photographs of my room.

I unpacked my bags and made the bed. The room is really quite spacious, but perhaps that's because there's only a desk, a bed and a recessed wardrobe in it, so there's a lot of floor space. Sadly the walls are wallpapered a plain white, so I can't put up any posters to make the room feel more homely, but I'm sure I'll manage. We've to meet at 10:30 tomorrow for a 'survival orientation' followed by getting our documentation sorted out at the university I think, so that should be interesting. I wanted to go for a wander around Tokyo when we got in but I was just too tired.

I'll do my best to update this tomorrow, but no promises