I will preface this trip report and state that I am not much of a photo taker, so apologies on the lack of photos on this trip report. I also wish I had written this while on the road.. notes for future TR's 
The itinerary is MEL-SYD-HND ---> Hakuba 5 nights ---> Tokyo 3 nights NRT-BNE-MEL
I have never been to Japan before and was looking forward to it.
Our J upgrade came trough at T-27 for the SYD-HND leg of the journey and I jumped on to allocate some seats. plane is a 744 V2, and we had a choice of 10D&F (separated seats, not sure why someone would select 8E intentionally) on lower deck or 12K&15A on upper deck. 11J&K were blocked out. I selected the two singles on the upper deck over two singles in the centre near a toilet on the lower deck. I hoped that we could pull the 11J&K pair. It was my wife's first time in J on a long haul and I wanted to go upper deck for it.
Flight 1. QF456 MEL-SYD the usual 1715 commuter flight. We checked in at the business counter at the airport as I wasnt sure how OLCI worked on these types of flights and also to try an get the 11J&K pair for the second flight. I was told by the agent that only SYD business lounge could unblock the seats for us and that we had to wait til we got there. After check in we stopped by the QP for a drink. It was chockers as usual for a Friday arvo.
The flight left from gate 12 and, as usual for a Friday afternoon, was packed, but we had 13 A&B so small mercies. It was a refurbed bird but we got chatting to our neighbour in 13C about his new TV show. It was a good chat so the flight seemed to go quite quickly. The flight was originally marked as a snack but came out as dinner. I had a pasta that was pretty good. The transfer to the Int terminal has moved since I was last through SYD for a international flight and we came out at the gate right next to it. After a 10min wait (we literally missed the previous bus by seconds) We boarded and went to the International Terminal.
We had an express pass for customs and I am glad we did as it was a breeze. I went straight to Bus lounge to see if we could change these seats. Lounge agent said she would check and get back to us. We went for a walk down to the tax refund desk.. and walked straight back. the line was snaking well past the chanel counter at the duty free store. I must admit the access to the business lounge is quite a pain in the bum. walk all the way down, climb escalator, walk pretty much all the way back. I couldnt find any other access. Lounge agent told us she couldnt give u the seats together as they had been given to two singles about 5 mins before we arrived and that she was unhappy that the counter agent in MEL didn't call or put a note on the system for us. She said she also tried to contact the passengers in 12J and 15B to see if either wanted to swap with us. 15B said no as he refused to fly in a window seat, and she couldnt locate 12J. Its OK as someone else has previously said, I would rather fly business separately than fly economy at all.. My wife wasn't too fussed either.
Flight 12 QF25 SYD HND, 2130. It appears that there is a lot of work going on at the Int terminal in sydney and our Flight left from Gate 10 which was surrounded by boards. Boarding was was pretty relaxed affair and we headed upstairs to our seats. My wife and I parted ways and I headed to my seat at 12K. I met the lady in 12J there and spoke to her briefly about swapping seats. She politely declined but she asked if she could apologise to my wife. She headed over to my wife and spoke to her briefly. Next thing was she came back and had agreed to swap seats. I must offer my warmest thanks for her generosity as she was not obligated to this for us.
We settled in to our seats while everybody put on their pajamas. Plane pushed back a few minutes late and started the engines. The captain informed us that No2 engine was not starting due to a replaced controller and that there would be a delay. of about 15mins. 15mins later we were told that this had failed to fix the issue and that we would need to return to the gate while they replaced the part they had replaced earlier in the day. They were concious of the departure time and there were people o the phone to canberra to secure us a release to take off after the curfew. Issue fixed and release obtained we taxiied and took off about 2315.
Service was good, with supper starting about 1 hour into the flight. Wife and I had pre-ordered the fish which was pretty tasty. Wife's wine was a Cab Sav of some description but i didn't take any real notice. I had a Chivas and dry. Settled in for some sleep and got a good few hours before being woken for breakfast. Wife and I had scrambled egg with some bacon and mushrooms. egg was ok as were mushrooms but bacon was very dry and chewy.
Flight time was a tad over 8.75 hours. Arrived in HND just after 6am, 35 mins after scheduled time. I think this flight must have some serious fat in the schedule as it is due at 0530JST but routinely arrives between 0415JST and 0450. Anyway a later arrival was fine by me as we had a bus to Hakuba leaving around 0930. The terminal at HND is quite easy to get around and we cleared customs and headed out to wait for the bus. First stop however was the post office on Lvl3 to collect my hired pocket WiFi.
Due to the long wait we decided to explore the terminal a bit. The departure hall is a strange place to navigate with elevator access to level 5 via level 4 which can only be accessed from level 3.. Due it being so early most shops were still closed but as it was pushing -730 by this time things were starting to open up. On level 5 was an observation deck you could still go out side onto. It was nice to get some "fresh" air and look at the airport a bit.
At 0900 we went down to lvl2 and checked in for the bus ride to Hakuba. The trip takes about 5.5 hours with a stop every two hours. What surprised me was that the route they took on the bus went straight through the centre of tokyo. I was expecting the route to skirt the city as the destination is more to the north west of the airport and the city to the north east, but to my surprise, the bus flew through with few delays. I think we stopped for toll booths and that was about it.
Japan has some of these interesting technological conundrums. Manned toll booths, limited credit card facilities, these are all things we left behind sometime ago.
The first rest stop was about an hour out of tokyo on the highway. In any western country you would see one of the big (or two or three) fast food chains bolted onto a petrol station. I didnt see one of these. The rest stop was a large toilet block with a convenience store/diner/corndog kiosk. The diner was a typical (i soon learned what was typical) one where you buy a ticket from a vending machine and present the ticket to the server who then makes you food. Drink options were a wall of vending machines, two of which featured hot coffee.. in a can.. Canned coffee machines are everywhere. One of our tour guides told us that you could reconcile drinking it as long as you tried to disassociate it with actual coffee. That kind of thought process worked. I found myself getting more used to it as time went on, and being thankful for it when you ran out of money and couldnt locate an atm no matter how hard you tried. 110yen a can is easy to find in loose change.
Next stop a building on the outskirts of Nagano that is basically one giant gift store. Pretty much all the buses stop here including the tour ones. We changed buses here for Hakuba after a quick lunch of tasty ramen and headed onto Hakuba.
The itinerary is MEL-SYD-HND ---> Hakuba 5 nights ---> Tokyo 3 nights NRT-BNE-MEL
I have never been to Japan before and was looking forward to it.
Our J upgrade came trough at T-27 for the SYD-HND leg of the journey and I jumped on to allocate some seats. plane is a 744 V2, and we had a choice of 10D&F (separated seats, not sure why someone would select 8E intentionally) on lower deck or 12K&15A on upper deck. 11J&K were blocked out. I selected the two singles on the upper deck over two singles in the centre near a toilet on the lower deck. I hoped that we could pull the 11J&K pair. It was my wife's first time in J on a long haul and I wanted to go upper deck for it.
Flight 1. QF456 MEL-SYD the usual 1715 commuter flight. We checked in at the business counter at the airport as I wasnt sure how OLCI worked on these types of flights and also to try an get the 11J&K pair for the second flight. I was told by the agent that only SYD business lounge could unblock the seats for us and that we had to wait til we got there. After check in we stopped by the QP for a drink. It was chockers as usual for a Friday arvo.
The flight left from gate 12 and, as usual for a Friday afternoon, was packed, but we had 13 A&B so small mercies. It was a refurbed bird but we got chatting to our neighbour in 13C about his new TV show. It was a good chat so the flight seemed to go quite quickly. The flight was originally marked as a snack but came out as dinner. I had a pasta that was pretty good. The transfer to the Int terminal has moved since I was last through SYD for a international flight and we came out at the gate right next to it. After a 10min wait (we literally missed the previous bus by seconds) We boarded and went to the International Terminal.
We had an express pass for customs and I am glad we did as it was a breeze. I went straight to Bus lounge to see if we could change these seats. Lounge agent said she would check and get back to us. We went for a walk down to the tax refund desk.. and walked straight back. the line was snaking well past the chanel counter at the duty free store. I must admit the access to the business lounge is quite a pain in the bum. walk all the way down, climb escalator, walk pretty much all the way back. I couldnt find any other access. Lounge agent told us she couldnt give u the seats together as they had been given to two singles about 5 mins before we arrived and that she was unhappy that the counter agent in MEL didn't call or put a note on the system for us. She said she also tried to contact the passengers in 12J and 15B to see if either wanted to swap with us. 15B said no as he refused to fly in a window seat, and she couldnt locate 12J. Its OK as someone else has previously said, I would rather fly business separately than fly economy at all.. My wife wasn't too fussed either.
Flight 12 QF25 SYD HND, 2130. It appears that there is a lot of work going on at the Int terminal in sydney and our Flight left from Gate 10 which was surrounded by boards. Boarding was was pretty relaxed affair and we headed upstairs to our seats. My wife and I parted ways and I headed to my seat at 12K. I met the lady in 12J there and spoke to her briefly about swapping seats. She politely declined but she asked if she could apologise to my wife. She headed over to my wife and spoke to her briefly. Next thing was she came back and had agreed to swap seats. I must offer my warmest thanks for her generosity as she was not obligated to this for us.
We settled in to our seats while everybody put on their pajamas. Plane pushed back a few minutes late and started the engines. The captain informed us that No2 engine was not starting due to a replaced controller and that there would be a delay. of about 15mins. 15mins later we were told that this had failed to fix the issue and that we would need to return to the gate while they replaced the part they had replaced earlier in the day. They were concious of the departure time and there were people o the phone to canberra to secure us a release to take off after the curfew. Issue fixed and release obtained we taxiied and took off about 2315.
Service was good, with supper starting about 1 hour into the flight. Wife and I had pre-ordered the fish which was pretty tasty. Wife's wine was a Cab Sav of some description but i didn't take any real notice. I had a Chivas and dry. Settled in for some sleep and got a good few hours before being woken for breakfast. Wife and I had scrambled egg with some bacon and mushrooms. egg was ok as were mushrooms but bacon was very dry and chewy.
Flight time was a tad over 8.75 hours. Arrived in HND just after 6am, 35 mins after scheduled time. I think this flight must have some serious fat in the schedule as it is due at 0530JST but routinely arrives between 0415JST and 0450. Anyway a later arrival was fine by me as we had a bus to Hakuba leaving around 0930. The terminal at HND is quite easy to get around and we cleared customs and headed out to wait for the bus. First stop however was the post office on Lvl3 to collect my hired pocket WiFi.
Due to the long wait we decided to explore the terminal a bit. The departure hall is a strange place to navigate with elevator access to level 5 via level 4 which can only be accessed from level 3.
. Due it being so early most shops were still closed but as it was pushing -730 by this time things were starting to open up. On level 5 was an observation deck you could still go out side onto. It was nice to get some "fresh" air and look at the airport a bit. At 0900 we went down to lvl2 and checked in for the bus ride to Hakuba. The trip takes about 5.5 hours with a stop every two hours. What surprised me was that the route they took on the bus went straight through the centre of tokyo. I was expecting the route to skirt the city as the destination is more to the north west of the airport and the city to the north east, but to my surprise, the bus flew through with few delays. I think we stopped for toll booths and that was about it.
Japan has some of these interesting technological conundrums. Manned toll booths, limited credit card facilities, these are all things we left behind sometime ago.
The first rest stop was about an hour out of tokyo on the highway. In any western country you would see one of the big (or two or three) fast food chains bolted onto a petrol station. I didnt see one of these. The rest stop was a large toilet block with a convenience store/diner/corndog kiosk. The diner was a typical (i soon learned what was typical) one where you buy a ticket from a vending machine and present the ticket to the server who then makes you food. Drink options were a wall of vending machines, two of which featured hot coffee.. in a can.. Canned coffee machines are everywhere. One of our tour guides told us that you could reconcile drinking it as long as you tried to disassociate it with actual coffee. That kind of thought process worked. I found myself getting more used to it as time went on, and being thankful for it when you ran out of money and couldnt locate an atm no matter how hard you tried. 110yen a can is easy to find in loose change.
Next stop a building on the outskirts of Nagano that is basically one giant gift store. Pretty much all the buses stop here including the tour ones. We changed buses here for Hakuba after a quick lunch of tasty ramen and headed onto Hakuba.
