Our first day was always going to be tiresome and drawn out due to travelling, though given both of our luck and fortunes we had a light dusting of drama to make things exciting!
To start, we got to City Airport for 7am (nothing says backpacking like leaving out of a business airport). Looking like a pair of scruff monsters amongst the suits we still claimed our free copy of the FT and headed to departures. Given we were due to have a 3 hour lay over in Milan, we thought we would skip the food and have the traditional departing pint before boarding.
Once on the plane, we sat there for a while waiting to depart. After a while the Pilot then messaged to say to the flight was cancelled due to maintenance issues (Fair call) so everyone had to get off. Thankfully Alitalia gave everyone food vouchers so we indulged in free Pret for breakfast.
Everyone was moved to a flight at 11am, which would give us 30 minutes to transfer at Milan onto the Tokyo plane. So cue the shortest amount of time I’ve spent in Italy while we sprinted through the airport and international customs for further baggage checks. Felt sorry for the man infant of us who had all his orange juice taken from him (which, given he bought post security in London seems a tad unfair).
Everything went well and we got onto our 12 hour flight. A few cheeks films (The Matrix, Detective Pikachu, Logan) and sneaky beers as well as a light sleep made the time pass.
We Landed into Tokyo at 10:30am local time and had a breeze getting through the airport. Getting to Tokyo was also really easy and we got a cheap buss for 1000 yen each (around 7 pounds). We got to our hotel (thought we would have a comfortable place to crash on the first night) and had a great nap.
In the evening we met up with one of Martin’s friends from University. He was in Tokyo for the Rugby as well as a bit of a Holiday and we was with a few friends, colleagues and his girlfriend. We went to the anime district of Tokyo where Martin won (annoyingly) a mini cuddly Pikachu.
We had some dinner at a small noodle place off the beaten track and discovered whisky high balls (whisky with soda water to make it a long drink). We ended the day at another restaurant where we stayed for another high ball.
